Hold Me Tight
by VitaSeptima
Summary: It's never over. With his best officer gone, the section in shambles and the shadow of Nightingale still lurking in the corners, Harry turns for support to the only person left who truly understands him. If only he can convince her that they could be so much more. An interlude between seasons 8 and 9. Everything belongs to Kudos and The BBC.
1. Chapter 1

They swarmed over her desk like a plague of locusts, shredding, devouring, not one secret left behind. He stood in his office, protected from their flurry by a pane of glass, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his face immobile. What did they know of sacrifice, these insects from Human Resources? To them, death was merely paperwork, a form to be boxed up and filed away. It was far more than that. It was a scar, deeper than any that cut across one's skin. Bruises were badges of honour, but wounds like these needed to be hidden away lest they be seen as weakness.

Harry let out a long, slow sigh. It was a lack of sleep that caused these maudlin thoughts. The entire city lay under a blanket of heat - no one was sleeping. When he did manage to find a respite from his wakefulness, it was only to see clouds of dust and ash, the faces of the fallen rising before him, leaving him no more rested than when his head had hit the pillow.

It was this inability to sleep that had led him to the Grid in the small hours of the morning, arriving before the world cracked open, giving him ample time to carry out his own search of Ros' desk; there were secrets not even HR should not know. It was his ritual to sweep the desk of departed agents, an act he had practised far too many times. He would sit in their empty chair, holding a place for them, one last farewell; touching and sorting their possessions, affording them the honour they were due. Strangely, his sweep of Ros' desk had turned up nothing personal; no mementoes, no photographs, she had been a ghost in her life. It was for the best, get out quick and leave nothing behind. Over the years, there had been only one desk where he had not completed the ritual; Ruth's. Clearing that desk would have been to acknowledge that she would never return and that had been a hope he could not do without.

A soft voice filtered through his musings.

"Are you alright?"

Ruth stood framed in the doorway as if his thoughts had conjured her. There was something different about her appearance though he couldn't quite pinpoint what it was.

"Is there something you need?"

"Yes, HR needs your signature on these forms."

He crossed over to his desk and she followed behind him as she always did. Placing the papers on the desk, she leant over and showed him where to sign. Her arm brushed his shoulder and a cloud of fragrance enveloped him, a concoction of whatever lotions and unguents she used, always particularly potent early in the morning. She left her finger on the line and he wanted to grab her hand, touch something fresh and alive and shake the spectre of death that clung to him.

"It's just to release her personal effects and files," she explained, assuming that he had paused to read the document.

"I know. I've done this many times."

He scrawled his signature on the papers, keenly aware that she was scrutinising him. Ordinarily, he would welcome the opportunity to look into her eyes but not today. It was easier to lock away the pain by being a closed man. He moved the papers towards her but she didn't leave. Her presence was comforting and irritating at the same time. He vacillated between telling her to leave and wanting her to stay by his side. She cleared her throat.

"About Ros' funeral-"

"I'm sure whatever you've decided is fine."

"Did you want to do the reading?"

"No."

His answer came out far harsher than he intended and he could tell by her lack of response that his tone had wounded her. She stepped away and he instantly wanted her to come back. The faint rustle of her skirt was her only reply as she left the office, the door sliding closed behind her.

The window framed her as she moved across the Grid, walking towards Deborah Langham. How could that woman still be here when so many others gone had before her? Of what they were talking about, he had no idea. He was content to stay in his office and let her deal with the intricacies of Human Resources. His throat was scratchy and dry, the after effect of swallowed grief. A decanter of scotch sat in the corner, patiently waiting to be of service whenever he needed it. It was too early in the morning. Besides, he had made a pact with himself to ease off the drink. His attempt to find oblivion after losing Ros had failed, the amount alcohol needed to numb the pain had increased exponentially with each passing death. He would end up succumbing to cirrhosis of the liver while all his agents had gone down fighting. He drummed his fingers on the desktop, the scotch silently calling his name. He distracted himself by flipping through a file. Turning his wrist, he glanced at his watch. He would have to leave his office at some point. Setting his shoulders straight, he stood and walked out onto the Grid.

His heels tapped ominously as he passed the scurrying HR insects and, not for the first time, he wished he hadn't given up wearing a waistcoat. That extra layer of tailored fabric always served to intimidate and insulate, creating an added buffer against the fray of the world. He resorted to adjusting his tie instead. Rounding the corner into the briefing room, he came upon Lucas and Tariq in the middle of a conversation. He looked around the table, his eyes alighting on each empty chair in turn. The room echoed with loss. He ran his hand over his face as if the motion could wipe away everything that had gone on before.

Tariq looked up at him, his eyes young and uncluttered. "Where's Ruth?"

Harry waved his hand in the direction of the Grid. "She's dealing with..." He didn't know how to complete the sentence.

"We can wait." Lucas relaxed back into his chair.

"And sit here making painful small talk with the two of you? We'll start without her."

The two men shared a look but Harry ignored it. He sat down and opened the file folder in front of him.

"In rather Sisyphean fashion, we've been giving the task of overseeing the former Home Secretary's funeral. There will be a number of dignitaries present-"

As he spoke, Ruth hurried through the door, a large pile of folders in her arms. She deposited the files on the table, the top one sliding off, a piece of paper coming loose and floating down to land on Harry's shoe. It reminded him of that first day when she had stumbled into his life, wide-eyed and innocent. He had not thought she would last a week yet here she was years later and at the same time nothing at all like that young woman. She was more assured, wiser, the spark of effusive innocence doused by the Service. His nostalgia-tinged thoughts fled as he leant over to pick up the paper, giving a slight grimace as he handed it to her.

"As I was saying, we'll be monitoring Andrew Lawrence's funeral. There will be a number of politicians in attendance, rumours that the Pakistani Prime Minister wants to come. Ruth, I'm going to need you to acquire a full list of attendees as well as a rolling threat assessment."

"Why us, Harry?" Lucas asked. "We're stretched thin as it is."

I think it's more of a probationary call, as the Home Secretary was lost on our watch." Harry closed his eyes. "My watch."

"It was all of us, Harry," Ruth asserted.

He nodded in her direction. "We need to make sure any remaining tentacles of Nightingale are, if not severed, at least exposed."

Ruth pulled out a file containing her notes. "Russell Price and Sarah Caufield," she paused for a moment but did not look at Lucas, "are gone but we could be dealing with a Hydra."

"We're going back through the guest list at Basel," said Tariq "See if we can make any more connections there."

"I think our prime objective should be to cut off the money," Ruth continued. "The six billion that was transferred to Pakistan has now vanished."

"Do we have any word on Hans Lindemann?" Lucas asked.

"We still have the bugs in his office that you planted," said Tariq.

There was a sighting of him on this man's yacht." Ruth produced a picture from her file. "Italian financier, Antonio Romaldi."

Lucas took the picture from her, his eyebrow raised as he observed the scantily clad women surrounding the man. "Obviously, he needed a little vacation after his failed bid for geopolitical realignment."

"We don't know if it has failed." Harry tapped his fingers on the table. "It may still be ongoing. And we have no concrete trail to him."

"Innocent people don't leave the country," said Lucas.

"We don't know who all the players are so we need to keep this as contained as possible," Harry cautioned.

"We're going to have to pull from other sections," said Lucas.

"Agreed. Only for the funeral, not for any investigation into Nightingale." Harry nodded. "Lucas, I'm instating you as acting Section Chief until we sort out our personnel shortage."

"I can do the job, Harry"

"We'll see..."

Ruth indicated the pile of folders. "I've got possible candidates here."

Harry eyed the pile with suspicion as if the papers held poison. "We don't have time to wade through the detritus sent from HR."

"We have to rebuild the section," Ruth pointed out.

"I am well aware of that." His fingers closed in on one another as he held in his anger.

"We never replaced Jo,"

"I know the needs of my own bloody section!" His fist came down on the table with a resounding thud.

Ruth jumped as the table shook. The room was unnaturally quiet, his words reverberating in the silence.

"Getting angry at Ruth is not going to bring anyone back," Lucas said calmly.

"It's fine, Lucas." She busied herself with her papers, looking down at her notes and refusing to look at Harry.

Harry clenched his jaw. He had no idea why he had snapped at Ruth other than the fact that she was there. In the ever-dwindling circle of people he could trust, she was his most valued and should be treated accordingly but his anger had a fuel of its own and it would not let him apologise. The best tactic was always to concede nothing.

"Lucas, set up an operation file and get some eyes on the church, take Tariq if you need to." He rose from his chair, an ember of anger still smouldering in the pit of his belly, looking for a target to burn. If they wanted to rebuild the team, so be it. "I'm going to need a short list of candidates on my desk by tomorrow."

"Tomorrow!" Lucas sat up in his chair. "That's a bit tight."

"If you can't handle it..." Harry gathered up his files to leave.

"I'll help you," Ruth quietly volunteered.

Harry turned to her, taking her offer to help as a slight against his authority. "You have your own job."

"We need to help each other." Her voice remained steady as she looked up at him. "We're a team, Harry."

He battled the urge to tell her that it was not a democracy, he was the leader, and his decisions were final. A small voice in the back of his head cautioned that it was better to leave; she had born enough of his anger that day. He directed his fury into his stride, leaving the occupants of the room with nothing more than the echo of his angry heels. He had every right to be angry. He had lost his best officer, the one person so closely aligned with his thinking that they shared the same mind. It was of little solace that he had told her as much, the first time he had lost her during that whole Yalta debacle. How dare she leave him again? Damn her stubbornness and her refusal to desert Andrew Lawrence. Circling amongst the rage that he felt at Ros, the Service, the world in general, was an inchoate anger at Ruth and for the life of him, he couldn't figure the reason for it.

He walked back into his office, greeted by the incessant blinking light of his phone, and immediately lost himself down the rabbit hole of voice messaging.

...

The pen in his hand stopped when the growl of his stomach became too loud to ignore. He glanced at his watch. It was well past dinnertime. The Grid sat in half darkness, dotted by the occasional desk lamp. He leant back in his chair, rubbing his neck. Odd, she hadn't come to him as she usually did, to see how he was fairing, to talk him out of his anger. That's what the old Ruth would have done, or rather the young Ruth. This Ruth was not as predictable. If he were a more reflective man, he might think that could be the reason he was angry. She was not the woman he wanted her to be. But that would take a level of introspection he was not ready to delve into. That sort of self-analyse would require an entire bottle of scotch.

He walked out into the quiet of the Grid, the only sound Tariq diligently tapping away at his keyboard. The light was still on at her desk so she had not gone home yet. The top of her desk was littered with worn down pencils, scraps of paper covered with illegible writing and a half-empty cup of tea. A tiny jar sat near the edge of the desk and he picked it up, rolling it over in his palm, the faint scent of berries reaching his nostrils. Makeup, perhaps? It had been quite some time since he had encountered that sort of paraphernalia. The entire space contained little clues about Ruth, a stark contrast to the emptiness of Ros' desk.

The sound of voices came from the briefing room and he went to investigate. As he neared the door to the room, he heard Lucas' low voice, answered by a soft laugh from Ruth. He stopped outside the door overcome by a spate of irrational jealousy. He should be the one to make her laugh. Of course, the likelihood of that happening after the way he had treated her today, after all the sadness they had accumulated between them from days past, was depressingly small. He entered the room. The table was covered with the file folders from earlier that morning, Lucas and Ruth sitting side by side, deliberating over their contents. They both looked up when they heard him enter.

"Anything the matter?" Lucas asked.

"It's late," he pointed out.

"We have a deadline."

"I'm willing to extend it in the interest of not burning out the members of the section I still have."

Tariq came up behind Harry. "Lucas, Six is on the phone for you."

"Right." Lucas rose and strode out of the room.

Ruth had remained quiet during the exchange, focusing her attention on rearranging the contents of a folder. He walked up to where she sat and leant back against the table, stretching his legs, settling himself in as he crossed his arms.

"Any potential in that pile?"

"A few." Her fingers remained busy sifting and sorting.

"I'm sorry about earlier."

She nodded and continued to align a stack of papers.

"I didn't mean to be curt. It was uncalled for."

"It's fine, really." She flipped through the pile, organising the folders in an order known only to her.

Her ability to find objects to divert her attention when faced with anything remotely personal fascinated him. She stood up, the motion bringing her body closer to his and he found her proximity reassuring. He had missed her presence during the day and he quickly searched for a way to recapture it.

"Could I buy you a drink?"

The words fell from his mouth completely unpremeditated, surprising even him. Her back stiffened and her hands stilled on top of the folders. He had her attention at least. The words continued to come of their own accord.

"As an apology."

She bit her lip in thought and kept her eyes lowered, her eyelashes casting dark shadows against her cheek. She was a shadow now, dressed all in black. Not quite black, dark blue. That was it, her clothes were different. The fit of her jacket outlined her form and her belt was cinched tight at her waist giving definition to her hips. Her lips were darker, perhaps from what was in that little jar. These little discoveries made him want to know more and a familiar wave of longing ran through him, pulling him towards her. Since her return, he had not made any overtures towards her, apart from his words on the bench after Jo's death, fearing that once he set himself on that course he would not be able to change direction. Their relationship had existed on some tenuous plane that he dared not disturb. She, on the other hand, had twice bestowed touches of comfort and had offered to go for a drink with him after Blake's resignation. The offer he was making now, he told himself, was merely an extension of hers.

As he waited for his response, he dipped his head towards her, his thigh close to the file where her hands lay. A warmth stole through his tired bones, easing into his chest, coating his once dry throat, giving his voice a mellow quality.

"The apology isn't complete unless it's accepted."

She looked up at him and tilted her head.

"Alright."

It was all she said. Plain and simple but it was enough for him.

"Come by my office when you're done."

He pushed himself away from the table and headed out the door and down the corridor. With each stride, the tension eased from his body, his face relaxing and, for the first time in days, the corners of his lips tipped in a tiny smile.


	2. Chapter 2

A violin played soft and low, the music filtering through an unobtrusively placed speaker. Harry was faintly conscious of the melody, along with the subdued voices of fellow diners and the tinkling of silverware on china, but it all faded into the background as he settled back to admire his companion. Ruth's hand drew intricate patterns over the red tablecloth, her fingers coming to rest on the embossed handle of her knife. There had been a ring on one of those fingers, the last time they had dined like this. Of course, the place where they sat now was far different from the one they had patronised all those years ago; this one had a more understated elegance. Half-shelled sconces on the wall, a small lamp on the table, wrapping them in a private glow, relegating everything else to the shadows, all of it serving to create the illusion of intimacy. Ruth's eyes glanced about the room, taking in their surroundings and then rounded back to rest on him.

"This is a bit more than a drink, Harry."

"I was hungry."

"Yes, but-"

"I think you're hungry too."

Her eyes hooked on his, holding his gaze for a heartbeat, then two, and then quickly sliding away. He didn't mind, it meant that he could watch her unencumbered. It was an easy journey down the line of her throat to the gentle rise and fall of her breasts, the light throwing shadows and highlights on her skin that were far too alluring. It was true, he was hungry, he hadn't had a proper meal in months, not since her return, and during the time that she had been away, the fare had been markedly empty and unfulfilling. Was she hungry? Was her appetite as keen as his? Best not go too far down that road. He cleared his throat and took a sip of his wine. It was rich and dark, an Italian red that she had chosen, ordering the bottle with an accent he had found utterly charming. This bottle didn't count; it was hard liquor that he had forsworn. He sat back, unable to keep his eyes from once again glancing back down to her breasts.

"I don't know if I'm dressed for this place." Her free hand rose to adjust the neckline of her jacket. She knew exactly where he was looking.

"I'll give you fair warning the next time."

Her fingers stilled on her knife and she let her hands drop modestly into her lap. He needed to step back - he wasn't playing fair. She had agreed to a drink and he had changed the rules in mid-play, taking her instead to a restaurant. It wasn't entirely his fault; it was the summer air, the heat trapped in the asphalt, rising to embrace them as they drove through the humid night. The entire city was held captive by the last days of summer, caught between two seasons. Who was he to resist that feeling of exquisite limbo?

"Have you been here before?" she asked.

"I've driven past it a few times and I've always wondered what it was like inside."

He wouldn't tell her how he had discovered the place or with whom. Nor would he divulge that he had spent the entire dinner with that other woman imagining that he was with her.

"You're lying," she challenged with a gleam in her eye.

He froze at the idea that she could read his thoughts. He did his best to keep his face impassive. "I am not."

"Yes, you are. You have a tell."

"I do not." He sat up, bristling at her assertion.

"The corner of your mouth." She moved her finger to indicate a spot on her bottom lip. "It moves ever so slightly."

Her lips formed into an engaging pout, the movement catching him completely off guard, leaving him delightfully mesmerised and more than a bit flustered. He was unable to discern if her gesture was entirely innocent or if she was flirting with him. In a rare fit of self-consciousness, he pressed his lips together, unnerved by the thought that she must have studied them in great detail to work out such a deduction.

"No one in our business wants to be told they have a tell." He adjusted his posture, pulling down his suit jacket, attempting to assert a modicum of control over the situation and his supposed tell.

"Well, I've known you for a very long time."

She met his eyes, a teasing smile on her lips, giving him a brief glimpse of the woman she once was. Perhaps one day she would come back to him, that Ruth of laughter and smiles. He took a deep breath. Surely, there was no harm in looking at her lips. He had seen enough horror, he deserved a moment of beauty; why not relish the novelty of finally having her to himself in a setting outside the Grid.

The waiter arrived with their entrees, interrupting Harry's indulgent musings. He picked up his knife and fork, stomach growling in anticipation, taste buds salivating over the piece of choice beef. Ruth did not follow his lead but sat perfectly still, her eyes lowered to her plate. He hesitated, motioning with his cutlery.

"Is anything wrong?"

"It's fish." She remained focused on the plate.

"Isn't that what you ordered?"

"Yes. I wasn't thinking..." Her hand hesitated near her plate, debating whether to push it away. "I haven't had bass since..." Her eyes rose to his, large and lost, as if she had broken something of great value and was afraid to confess the damage. She spoke to him in a whispered confession. "I had some on the grill when they came."

Her look shot straight through him, silently pleading with him to fix that which had been broken. His stomach knotted with the knowledge that the blame for her fractured life lay squarely at his feet. He didn't know what to do, how to help her. He searched for words that would bring their conversation back from the darkness that threatened to overtake it. His heart beat erratically with the fear that he would lose her down a well of memory. She looked away from him and out over the restaurant, a hardness stealing over her features. He found her behaviour disconcerting. When had this happened? This mastery over her emotions. It was highly commendable, the ability to divorce oneself from pain; it had saved him many times, but a small corner of his heart worried that she would become too much like him, so proficient in denying the pain that one day she might feel nothing. Her hand gravitated to her wine glass and she pushed it towards him.

"I'd like another glass of wine please," she said, her voice eerily flat.

He picked up the bottle and filled her glass. "You could order something else."

She shook her head.

"You could have mine if you like." He gestured to his plate.

She looked down at his meal. "It's a bit too raw."

The slice of beef, so appetising earlier, had revealed its pink centre, a trickle of rose coloured juice flowing onto the plate. How fitting that his meal should still contain blood. His grip tightened around his fork; she wasn't referring to his dinner. She took a large swallow of her wine and nodded, making an internal resolution. Picking up her knife and fork, she straightened up in her chair and gave him a faint smile.

"We can't avoid things forever, can we?"

It would always lie between them, that Pandora's Box of painful memories. They had not talked about George or the boy or anything that had happened it that room and if he had his way, they never would. He was painfully aware that he would always be trying to find a way to make it better. He cast his mind about, looking for a subject to distract her, coming upon and then tossing out, politics, world affairs, and work. Surely those topics were not the sum of him, he must have more to offer. They sat for a moment, eating quietly until he stumbled upon a thought.

"I have tickets for the opera on Friday."

"That sounds nice."

"It's Tosca."

"Italian melodrama, that doesn't sound like you," she observed drily.

"One can only listen to the Ring Cycle so many times."

"True."

At his comment, the softness returned to her face. His shoulders relaxed and he felt a small sense of relief that they had for the moment managed to navigate past an emotional whirlpool.

"Do you know it?" He took a bite from his meal, closing his eyes to savour the taste.

"Is it the one about the artist and the singer?"

"Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore."

"I live for art, I live for love." Realising what she had said, her eyebrow rose and she gave him a look, suspecting that he had set her up to say those words. Instead of the moment turning awkward, she volleyed back at him. "Do you know the solo the tenor sings?"

"Something about stars, I believe."

"O, dolci baci, o languide carezze." She looked past his shoulder, a soulful quality to her voice.

"That's not what it's called." He pointed his fork at her. "I know that much."

"It's a line from the piece." She returned to concentrating on cutting up her fish.

Of course, she could quote the libretto. She knew the opera inside and out. She knew everything, including his thoughts before he even had them.

"What does it mean?" he prodded, having a faint inkling of the translation.

"If only you knew someone who spoke Italian." She popped a piece of fish in her mouth and gave him an impish smile as she chewed.

Hypnotised by her wine-stained lips, he forgot about his meal, leaving his knife and fork to hover above his plate. He shook his head.

"Someday you'll tell me."

She shrugged her shoulders and took a sip of her wine. He reached for his glass, mirroring her actions. He missed wine. It softened the edges of everything, including him. He rolled it around in his mouth, tasting the tannins, the liquid loosening his tongue, the words flowing forth.

"I get the season, though I oft times end up giving them away."

He did not tell her that he avoided certain performances knowing there would be a colleague or a politician attending that night. There were so many things he had never told her but at that moment, basking in the amber glow of the small lamp, he wanted to tell her everything. They had reached a juncture in the conversation, two different paths presenting themselves to him. In the past, when confronted with the opportunity, he would let the moment quietly slip away but tonight was different. Perhaps it was the wine talking or the remnants of his earlier courage, or that he was sailing on a stream, content to go where the current carried him, but he needed to ask the question.

"Would you like to go with me?"

She took a deep breath, her eyes dropping back down to her plate.

"It doesn't matter, I was just wondering. Shame to waste a ticket." He eased the question back. He had overshot and listed perilously close to the edge.

"This fish is actually very good," she said, her fork scraping the plate, evading the question.

The subject was changed, the course corrected, and he relaxed a fraction hoping that all was not lost. He desperately wanted the evening to continue in the earlier vein of ease they had found.

"Care for some dessert?"

"No, thank you." She looked at him and saw his disappointment. "But we should probably have a coffee before you drive home."

...

The car glided through the night, the traffic proving uncharacteristically cooperative, much to Harry's dismay. Not a slowdown or delay in sight that would extend the evening and keep her alone with him. The radio played quietly, strains of a classical guitar piece, evocative and lonely, drifting on the breeze that blew through his half-opened window. For most of the drive, they had chatted amiably about everything and nothing and had fallen into a comfortable silence. At least, that's what he had assumed. He glanced over at Ruth. She was leaning back against the headrest, her eyes closed, the ever present furrow of thought missing from her brow. He smiled at the discovery and turned his attention back to the road. They could be driving home together, after a day on the Grid, falling asleep, falling into each other. He gripped the steering wheel, and inhaled a deep breath; steeling himself from letting his thoughts stray too far. At a traffic signal, he stole another look at her, his eyes travelling down her body, the seatbelt sitting across her breasts, her palms turned up in her lap, her legs in black boots fading into the darkness under the seat. A wave of tenderness washed over him and he wanted to run his finger across her cheek or place his had hand possessively on her knee. She drew in a sharp breath as if he had touched her, and he quickly turned back to the road. She sat up in her seat, blinking.

"Did I nod off? Sorry."

"I have been known to do that to people."

She brushed her hair back and craned her neck, looking about to see where they were. "We're close. It's just past this street." She motioned with her hand.

After a few blocks, he pulled up outside a row of houses, their gardens ringed with iron fences; each building carved into flats, he supposed. He found a space between two small cars and shut off the engine. There was a soft click as her seatbelt slid back into place and he reached down to undo his own.

"I'll walk you in."

"That's alright," she assured him.

Her hand rested on the door handle as she twisted her body around to look at him. She placed her free hand on his forearm, her lips slightly parted as if she were about to say something. He leant his head in, anticipating her words, waiting for her to speak, but she was silent. His eyes fell to her lips, the memory of the pout she had shown him earlier rising to the forefront of his consciousness. She didn't move. The breeze sighed through the window, caressing the back of his neck. The evening was warm and inviting and so was she. Her face was so temptingly near, he need only move a fraction to feel her lips under his.

"Goodnight Harry."

Her words broke the spell. She turned away but he refused to let the moment go. He grabbed her hand and held it to his forearm.

"Why did you have dinner with me?"

"I agreed to a drink," she corrected him with an indulgent smile.

"Why?"

She closed her eyes. "I didn't want you to be alone. Not after everything that has happened."

Before he had time to quell it, a wave of disappointment washed over him. He looked away, attempting to school his features back into his usual stone of indifference. He could try to hide his feeling but she knew him too well. She tilted her head in apology, her eyes silently asking him to understand. The only thing he could do was be gracious.

"Thank you for keeping me company."

She squeezed his arm reassuringly. "Thank you for the dinner."

She opened the door, and eased herself down, giving a little jump as she left the Range Rover. She turned back to him with a soft smile and closed the door. He watched as she walked up the path and waited until she was safely in her house.

He let out a long, tortuous sigh as he dropped his fist on the steering wheel. Damn. That's all it had been to her - an evening of support for someone who was dealing with loss. He couldn't be mad at her, he couldn't fault her, it was a very kind gesture. But after the evening they had just spent together he knew that is not what he wanted. He would have to once again lock up his feelings for her if only to save his sanity. It was just as she said, everything was still too raw.

He pulled the car out of the spot and drove into the night, the leaves rustling in the breeze as the radio continued to play. The air flowed through the window but the scent of her still lingered on, tantalisingly out of reach. It had been so easy to lose himself in her company, forget the grief of the past few days. He briefly closed his eyes and imagined the taste of her, feeling like a starving man who had glimpsed a feast, and could not bear the thought of returning to bread and water. Deep within him, a tightness grew, his skin tingling as he remembered the shade of her lips and the glow of her skin. So close. So close. He resigned himself to another sleepless night but it would not be the heat that kept him awake.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N - Thank you so much for reading and reviewing, always very much appreciated. You may have guessed where this is going and I've given myself the challenge of keeping these two in cannon but it will take a few more chapters to get them there._

* * *

Harry stood at the corner of her desk, silent as a shadow, noting every detail as she moved. Turned away, absorbed in her phone conversation, Ruth remained oblivious to the man who was observing her. Her shoulders were slightly rounded, the muscles of her back moving as she wrote down a piece of information. The faint outline of a bra strap showed beneath the blue fabric of her dress, a single stray hair sitting beside it. His fingers rose to remove it but stopped when she swivelled in her chair. Her eyes widened in surprise as she turned around and saw him. Holding up her hand to indicate he should wait, she ended the phone call and then looked at him expectantly.

"Come." He took a step away from the desk.

"Where?"

There had been a time when she would have followed him unquestioningly.

"The Home Office."

"What about Lucas?"

"He's busy." Impatience coloured his tone. "I need to meet with the interim Home Secretary and convince him that the threat of Nightingale is still real. And you need to extract a bona fide guest list for the funeral."

She nodded. "Let me get a few things together."

"I'll wait for you downstairs." He turned and walked away, giving her no opportunity for any further questions.

The lobby was dark and oppressive, making his decision to go outside and wait that much easier. He had spent far too many days in windowless rooms; he deserved a moment in the sun. The heat enveloped him as walked through the large wooden doors, the last vestiges of summer still clinging to the city, unwilling to make way for the burst of autumn. He gingerly walked down the steps, his spirits elevated by the sun. As he waited for his car, he checked his mobile and scrolled through his messages. It was an attempt to keep his mind occupied, a measure so he wouldn't have to think about her or the previous evening. He had debated the wisdom of bringing her along to Whitehall, but they needed a concrete list of guests and he didn't want to deal with a placeholder Home Secretary alone.

She finally arrived carrying a black leather briefcase, the handles long enough to fit over her shoulder and before he could ask what was inside, his mobile chimed. He motioned towards the waiting car as he took the call and opened the door for her. As she stepped into the car, the length of her leg stretched out behind her and he immediately lost the thread of his phone conversation. He asked the caller to repeat the words and continued on with his call as they settled themselves in. This time, she would have to wait. He rang off and turned to her.

"What's in there?" He motioned to her briefcase.

"Notes on Nightingale, indicators of possible resurgence, loose ends. A list of protocols for the funeral for a Member of Parliament. And I might need to take notes."

He couldn't help but smile. How different from his Section Chiefs whose only armour was their bravado. He settled back, taking a moment to enjoy the pleasure of being in the back seat of a car with her.

"I use a car when I go to Whitehall. It's faster, I can take calls." He felt compelled to explain why he needed a driver.

"It's not that far."

"There's always traffic."

"Such a nice day, everyone should be outside." She absently rubbed the corners of her briefcase and looked wistfully out the window.

She too deserved time in the sun. He should bring her to the Home Office more often. He looked away from her and out his own window. No, he had to keep their time alone to a minimum. Neither of them had mentioned the previous evening and he was certain that he could move beyond it. It had been one lovely night, never to be repeated, an outlier in their professional relationship.

The driver deposited them at the doors of Whitehall and they made their way towards the inner sanctum. It was the fate of all civil servants to outlive the tenure of the politicians they served but it did not make transitions any easier. The loss of Lawrence hung around him like a cloud. One more death. He needed a Home Secretary he could trust; he didn't have time to babysit a temporary one. They were ushered into the familiar office only to see an unfamiliar face sitting behind the desk. The young man rose and walked towards them holding out his hand.

"Miles Stanhope," he introduced himself.

Good Lord, this one was even younger than Lawrence, Harry observed. He shook the man's hand in return. "Harry Pearce. This is my Intelligence Analyst, Ruth Evershed."

Stanhope took his seat behind the desk, motioning for the two agents to take their seats across from him.

"We're a bit of a travelling circus round here of late. We've lost two Home Secretaries in the space of a month. I've got the file for now, but that's temporary, so I'm depending on you, Sir Harry."

"We'll certainly do our best." He felt no compulsion to tell the young man he need not address him by his title.

"I suppose we should start with the threat level," Stanhope prompted.

"Should the Prime Minister of Pakistan attend the funeral, we believe there may still be a significant threat to his life."

"So not to the British people?" Stanhope asked.

"Any threat to an individual on our soil is a possible threat to the country." He made no effort to hide the disdain in his voice.

Knowing that Harry did not suffer fools lightly, Ruth stepped in. "We haven't completely ruled the group that was behind Andrew Lawrence's death. We believe we know the source of their financing and there may still be a network of foreign operatives, the extent of which we are still determining."

Harry glanced at Ruth. She had not mentioned Nightingale by name, a wise move considering Stanhope was still an unknown quantity. She remembered the rules. Keep your cards close.

Stanhope nodded. "Prime Minister Modassa has asked for one your agents specifically. The fellow who rescued him from the hotel."

"We can certainly arrange that." Harry obliged. "But to assure everyone's safety, we need a complete list of all the guests at the ceremony."

"It's become a bit of a beast, you see. Everyone wants to be there. Lawrence is now being touted as a hero for sacrificing his life to avert a nuclear war. There's talk of a state funeral."

Harry sat forward in his chair. "The security involved in that would be phenomenal."

"That's not possible," Ruth interjected. "State funerals are reserved for Royalty."

Stanhope blinked and considered her statement. "Are you sure about that?"

"Positive," Ruth responded, leaving no room for argument.

Harry suppressed a smile, amused that the man would have even doubted Ruth. It had been the right decision to bring her along.

"It's imperative that we have a list of attendees," Ruth continued.

"The list is changing daily," Stanhope deferred.

"We need something to work with." Harry lifted his chin to illustrate his point. "Miss Evershed needs to do background checks."

"I'll have something drawn up later today and you can have your girl take a look at it."

Silence dropped on the room like a lead blanket. Ruth stiffened beside Harry, her fingers curling into a fist on top of her black briefcase. Before she could respond, he spoke, his voice low and precise.

"To clarify, Miss Evershed is not 'my girl'. She is a senior member of the team and a highly trained Intelligence Officer whose work has no doubt saved your life on more than one occasion."

Stanhope looked as if he had just found himself in the middle of a minefield, uncertain which way to step. "Yes, of course..."

"I'd be happy to assist in any way with compiling the information," Ruth offered, her voice unnaturally sweet.

Stanhope shifted around in his seat, vainly grasping at a way to maintain control over the meeting. "We could certainly use your help." He cleared his throat. "When would be a good time?"

"Now," Ruth stated flatly.

Harry did not suppress his smile. She may not be Ros but Ruth was certainly not a pushover.

Stanhope looked between the two agents and then reached to pick up the phone.

"Gwen, I'm sending Miss Evershed out to you. Please make sure she gets all the information she needs."

Ruth rose to leave but Harry remained seated his eyes trained on Stanhope as he spoke.

"Thank you, your cooperation is greatly appreciated." He slowly stood. "I certainly hope your tenure as Home Secretary ends on a far happier note than the last two." A little extra fear never hurt anyone.

He took his time exiting the room, leaving Stanhope with no doubt as to who held the cards. When he entered the outer office, Ruth was already in conversation with Gwen, her case open and files extracted. He caught her eye and beckoned her over to him with a nod of his head. She quickly excused herself and his chest expanded with the knowledge that he could to summon her from anywhere in the room with a nod. When she reached him, he placed a hand on her elbow and bent down to her ear.

"I've a meeting with the JIC," He glanced at his watch as he spoke. "I'll be back to check on you in two hours. Don't let them get away with anything."

"Do you want me to put a call into your driver?" she asked.

"No, I'll do that."

She nodded. After all, she was not his secretary. As he turned to walk away, she caught his arm and stopped him. Puzzled, he leant back in to hear what she had to say.

"So, I'm not your girl then?" she whispered. He blinked at her in surprise, not sure how to respond. She waited for a moment, looking as if she enjoyed his unease. "Good to know." She gave him a pert little smile and walked away.

He watched as she left, having no idea what had transpired. It felt like flirting but surely she was joking, having a little dig at Stanhope for his derogatory comment. Or did she mean something else? He tucked the exchange away in his mind, vowing he would take it out to analyse during what he expected to be an insufferable JIC meeting, where he would no doubt be a pincushion for every needle of responsibility in Lawrence's death.

...

The day hung humid, the air unmoving with an edge of brine to it. The midday rays reflected off the water and Harry squinted against their sparkling brightness. The heat burned through his dark jacket and a line of perspiration formed under his collar. In a fit of rebellion, he shrugged off his jacket and draped it over his arm, flexing his shoulders as if releasing a great weight. The cool of the concrete balustrade seeped through his shirtsleeves as he rested his forearms against it. He closed his eyes, the sun warm on his cheeks, wishing he could stay in that one spot and leave the realm to its own fate. It was a favourite place of his along the embankment, down from Whitehall, and yet a world away. There was a presence near his shoulder and he opened his eyes to find Ruth standing beside him.

"They only had the sparkling kind," she explained, juggling two green bottles. "I'm rather partial to it; I developed a taste for it years ago."

She paused for a moment, her eyes darting over the whiteness of his shirt, a strange look stealing over her face. She moistened her lips drawing his attention down to her mouth and the air stilled around them, suspended in the afternoon heat. A hint of a breeze caught the moment, carrying it away and she remembered her original intent. She handed him a bottle with one hand while struggling to keep the strap of her satchel over her shoulder with the other. He took the bottle and helped to move the strap up her arm, his fingers brushing over her shoulder, small and compact beneath his hand. A twist had formed in the leather and he slowly smoothed it out, giving him an excuse to let his hand linger a bit longer. She accepted his familiarity without flinching and gave him a fleeting smile of thanks. She opened her bottle and plopped the straw down the neck, slipping her lips over it, sipping the drink like a schoolgirl. Ever since she had demonstrated his tell with her own mouth, he had found his eyes continually wandering to her lips. He would have to do something about that fascination. He looked back out over the water and twisted the lid off his own drink, taking a sip straight from the bottle. They stood in silence, listening to the water lapping against the stone, the murmur of conversation as people passed by, the hum of the city that pervaded even the quietest spots.

"What time is it?" she asked.

He looked at his watch. "We've still got a few minutes."

The JIC meeting had ended early and she had been far more adept at wheedling information from Gwen than he had anticipated. He had given his driver a large buffer of time to return and pick them up and instead of calling to say that they were early, he had suggested they take a few minutes to enjoy the weather before heading back.

"Do you want to sit?" He looked around for a bench.

"I sit all day."

He nodded, disappointed at being denied the opportunity to sit beside her. He adjusted his weight so that he was leaning closer to her, but kept his attention out over the river.

"You've taken off your jacket," she observed.

"It's very hot. I don't remember it ever being this bad. Blame it on global warming."

"Climate change," she amended. "Extreme variations in the weather. More of a global climate disruption. Not always heat."

He turned to face her, casually leaning his elbow on the railing. Her voice held that rambling note of awkward explanation that he hadn't heard from her in such a long time. He took another swig of the sparkling water. Normally, he couldn't stand the stuff but if she drank it, he would drink it too. She looked remarkably cool, still in her jacket, nonplussed by the heat. Perhaps she had adapted to it while in Cyprus

"I've booked the chapel that Ros requested," said Ruth, "It's a few days after the memorial for Lawrence. She deserves a day of honour to herself."

He bowed his head. A scattering of dry leaves lay at his feet, a sign of the impending season change. He brushed them with his toe, the fragile husks crackling under foot, concentrating on them, letting Ruth's comment go answered.

"What do you think of Lucas as Section Chief?" he asked, changing the subject. She did not respond right away and he looked up to gauge her reaction.

"I think he would be good."

He nodded and looked back out over the river.

Ruth squinted at him. "You have reservations, though." She understood his silence as being an agreement. "Did you have reservations about Ros?"

"Yes."

"And she turned out to be one of your best. And she didn't come to us under very auspicious circumstances."

He couldn't explain that there would only ever be one Ros. That she had been cut from him, Athena-like, and forged stronger by the crucible of loss. He had lost a piece of himself. Fate would only allow him one such lieutenant in his lifetime.

"I worry about the past. His past," he quickly amended. "That Russia may come back to haunt him."

"Do you mean politically or emotionally?"

"They did hold him for eight years."

"I don't think you need to worry about his loyalty."

"I'm worried about the toll it took on him psychologically."

She followed his gaze out over the river, absently circling the straw around the neck of the bottle. "For all our failings, we humans are very resilient creatures. Traumas from out past don't have to define us."

He looked at her askance, wondering if that was indeed true.

"It's complicated.," Harry continued. "He had a wife, you know."

"Yes, I saw the file. She was an asset for a while."

"When we were double blinding Kachimov. She married someone else while Lucas was in prison."

She did not immediately pick up the thread of the conversation and he turned to see if she was still paying attention. Her fingers had moved down to the label on the bottle and she was picking away at it.

"Some people move on when circumstance are out of their control," she murmured without looking up.

"And in some, the past lingers forever."

A breeze skimmed along the river and up to where they stood, briefly breaking the humidity. The wind stirred her hair, blowing a strand across her eyes, and she tucked it back behind her ear.

"What did Lucas do?" she quietly asked.

"He burned her."

"That must have been very hard."

"It was. I'm not sure if he has truly let her go."

She closed her eyes at his thinly veiled words. In the distance, a church bell tolled the hour.

"We should go back," she said.

"We should," he echoed, unable to hide the note of yearning in his voice. On that one last day of summer, he wanted to reach out and touch her, slide his fingers along her jaw to the nape of her neck, twine them in her hair and give into his fascination with her lips. Instead, he straightened up and attempted to shrug on his jacket.

"Would you hold this for me?" He held out his water bottle. He slipped into the jacket, tugging at the lapels, pulling the sleeves down over the cuffs of his shirt.

"Why do you wear a jacket all the time?"

"Protection."

"From what?"

He didn't answer but looked at her from under his lids. She knew his Achilles heel, the spot he needed to protect. That the jacket was everything about the Service that kept them apart and at the same time wove them together. As long as he wore the jacket, he was her boss and everything about them was neatly defined by the parameters of the Grid. He took his bottle back from her.

"I suppose we can't toss these in the river."

"Only if there's a message in it." She gave him a crooked smile.

He stood looking into her eyes. What message was she sending him? One of friendship, he conjectured. The smile faded from her face but she held his gaze. There was a glint in her eye, a spark of promise, he was certain. She turned her head away from him but he had seen it; a faint message of something more.


	4. Chapter 4

A life reduced to mere words, the complexity of an operation parsed down to a sentence. One day soon, he too would be nothing more than an operational footnote. Harry grimaced at the task in front of him, shuffling papers across his desk, hoping the jumble of notes would somehow coalesce into a report on Nightingale. He rubbed his fingers over the deepening crease on his forehead. There were no words to explain the fact that one of his officers had been involved with a Nightingale operative. Idiot. He should have nipped that in the bud just as he had done with Tom, but he had let it slide and now they were all paying the price for it. Perhaps he could bury it somewhere in the report, hidden amongst political double speak. Everything was sliding away; the Section, his authority, and most definitely his concentration. He had spent another sleepless night, tossing about in the heat but it wasn't visions of the departed that had haunted his dreams, it was thoughts of fragrant skin and pouting lips. Either the weather would have to break or he would. He needed to clear his head. He organised the papers into a neat pile and stashed them away in a folder, vainly wishing that the next time he opened the file they would have magically transformed into a report. He heaved himself away from the desk and headed out of his office, in search of fresh air and a coffee.

As he walked across the Grid, the sound of familiar footsteps chased behind him a tread that he would be able to discern anywhere.

"Harry!" Ruth rushed toward him, a paper clutched in one hand. "He's on the list."

"Who?"

"Antonio Romaldi. The financier connected with Hans Lindemann."

She caught up to him, her shoulder brushing up against him as she came to a halt. She was standing beguilingly close, her face animated with that particular beauty only she possessed when finding a diamond of information. At the mention of Hans Lindemann, Lucas rose from his chair and walked over to the desk where Harry had stopped. As he neared the place where they stood, Ruth moved away from Harry, creating a space for Lucas to step into the conversation. Separated from one whose closeness he longed for, Harry pursed his lips, barely hiding his irritation. He pointedly reached across Lucas and extracted the paper from Ruth's hand.

"Why would he be at Lawrence's funeral?" He glanced at the names on the list.

"It doesn't make any sense." Lucas settled back against the desk. "He must know that we've made the connection between him, Lindemann and Nightingale."

"Except that we have nothing linking these men directly to Nightingale," Ruth pointed out.

"Did we miss something between him and Lawrence?" Harry asked.

Footsteps approached and they all turned round to see Tariq, trotting over to them.

"I've just discovered that before he was elected, Lawrence was involved with a charity called Light the World. It provides generators to undeveloped countries. With money generously donate by-"

"Let me guess," Harry interrupted. "Hans Lindemann"

"Passing through a number of shell corporations set up by Romaldi," Tariq added.

"That still doesn't give us anything connecting them to Nightingale," said Lucas.

"Except that we know Romaldi sets up the companies and disperses the wealth, we just have to find the companies that lead to Nightingale," said Ruth.

"Why Lawrence's charity?" asked Lucas.

Ruth spoke to Harry. "Perhaps that's why he was at Lindemann's Tuscan villa. They also knew Lawrence was friends with the Prime Minister of Pakistan."

"What's Lindemann's agenda?"

"Destroy and rebuild," she continued. "Convince elements of the Service that the only way to obliterate the Taliban is through nuclear war and then be on the first on the ground to get the contracts. It's all about money."

"Let's work on connecting the dots." He handed her the paper, meeting her eyes as he did. Instead of letting go of the document, he held on to it, overcome by the urge to take her by the hand and walk off the Grid, to find a place in the sun, as they had done the day before. "I'm going for a coffee." His voice fell to that special register reserved only for her. "Do you want one?"

She blinked at him, her eyes quickly darting to Lucas then Tariq and back again.

"No thank you. I've got my tea."

Lucas looked down at the floor, shuffling his feet, a sly smile on his face. Harry straightened up. The agent knew full well what he was up to. Deny and deflect. He turned to Lucas as if it were an everyday occurrence for him to ask his staff if they wanted a coffee.

"Anything for you, Lucas?"

"I'll have a coffee. Black. Thanks for asking."

Harry gave Lucas a tight smile. Having made one offer, he had to continue along the path of deflection. "Tariq? Anything?"

"I wouldn't mind a lemonade," the young man added.

Peeved that he had trapped himself into getting drinks for Lucas and Tariq, he once again turned back to Ruth. "Are you sure I can't get you anything?"

She looked at him, her bottom lip twitching as she suppressed a smile. She knew he had manoeuvred himself into a corner and she was not about to let him out of it.

"No thank you. I'm still good with my tea."

He sucked in his cheek, biting back one last plea for her to accompany him. "If you're sure. I don't give second chances."

"But you already asked her twice," Tariq pointed out.

"Thank you very much, Mr Massod." Harry straightened up. "Your facility with numbers is unparalleled."

Harry turned away, escaping before he could dig himself in a deeper hole and headed to the pods. He stepped through glass doors, the motors hissing with the air of his deflated expectations.

...

Having effectively reduced himself from Section Head to errand boy, Harry returned balancing a takeaway tray of beverages. How the mighty have fallen. There had been a time when all he had to do was call for Sam and she would bring him a coffee. The memory of the young woman stopped him, he had not thought of her in years. She had been young and rather pleasing to the eye, but in the end not hard enough to inhabit this world. She belonged to a different strata of spooks, an epoch when his resilience was indefatigable. He had lost so many of that team all in the space of a year. The elasticity of his reserve had weakened, each loss stretching it beyond the limit of stress . One day it would not spring back. He walked on, leaving the memory behind.

He crossed over to Lucas' desk but the man was nowhere to be seen. He plopped the coffee down, muttering a silent curse that it would be cold before Lucas had a chance to drink it. The tech suite was also empty but for humming computers, forcing him to leave Tariq's lemonade on a table. On his way to his own office, he stopped at Ruth's desk. She was also missing and for a brief moment, he wondered if he should be alarmed by the absence of his staff. He shrugged. An empty Grid worked to his advantage. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a green bottle, sliding it gently onto the desk.

"If I had known they had sparkling water I would have asked for one too."

Harry jumped. Tariq stood at his shoulder, smiling expectantly.

"Don't sneak up on people like that." Harry freed his own coffee from the tray and tossed the holder in a bin.

"But were spies," countered Tariq.

Harry levelled chilling gaze at the young man. "Is there something you wish to tell me?"

"Yes. It looks like Romaldi works through a clearing house here in the city."

"And?" Harry prompted.

"If we can find a way in, we might be able to crack into his accounts."

"What are you waiting for?"

"I just wanted the go-ahead."

"Do it."

Harry waved him off, sorely missing Malcolm and his penchant for hacking first and asking permission later. Everyone was getting a little too cheeky of late; he would have to bring down the gavel. At one time, the mere timbre of his voice had been enough to make those below him quake. He straightened the bottle on Ruth's desk one last time and quickly stepped away hoping to leave without discovery, although the point was now mute as Tariq had blown his cover. He entered his office and sank gratefully into his chair. A line of perspiration ran down his back, the fabric of his shirt sticking uncomfortably to his skin. He could blame it on the heat but he knew it was from Tariq discovering him in the act of leaving a drink for Ruth. He was being ridiculous, acting like a love-struck schoolboy or worse, an old man desperately clinging to a few kind words from a younger woman, reading whatever meaning he chose from a glint in her eye. It was all a fantasy that she should still be attracted to him. She had given him nothing, no indication that she wished to pursue anything beyond a friendship. She hadn't even consented to walk out with him to get a coffee. A wise man would give up, but he could not completely let go of the idea of her, of them, it kept his heart from petrifying, slowed the march of time, and most importantly of all, it relegated the shadow of his guilt to the corner.

He pried the lid off of his coffee and took a sip, grimacing at the tepid taste. He had been hoisted by his own petard.

He looked up to see Ruth, back in her chair, intently talking to Lucas as he sat on the corner of her desk. There was the distinct air of collusion about their conversation. What were they up to? Lucas walked back to his desk and she turned to her monitor, fingers flicking over the keys, the green bottle left standing unnoticed. Harry rested his chin on his hand, a tinge of disappointment running through him. Perhaps she had seen it and chosen to ignore it, not wanting to encourage him on any level. He watched as she typed, her head moving up and down, leaning forward in concentration. Her arm absently unfolded, stretching slowly over to reach her phone and abruptly stopped. She hesitated for a moment in thought. She quickly turned around in her chair, holding the green bottle in her hand. Her eyes caught Harry's and he straightened up, busying himself, opening up the folder on his desk. He flipped through the pages, not reading their contents but waiting for an appropriate amount of time to pass before he looked up. He glanced up to see that Ruth had turned back to her computer. It was a friendly gesture, that was all. It meant nothing more. He pulled his jacket tighter around him, adjusting the cuffs. He took a deep breath, focusing on the documents before him. He would find another Admin officer like Sam, a lovely distraction to get him coffee. His beverage fetching days were over.

...

True to her nature, Ruth walked straight into Harry's office without invitation, leaving it to Lucas to give a cursory tap on the door as he passed. Harry bridled at the intrusion and kept his focus on the report he was reading. Undaunted by his lack of attention, Ruth found a seat and arranged a pile of file folders on her lap. Lucas sat down beside her and they scuttled their chairs closer to Harry's desk.

Resigned to their invasion, he slapped the cover closed on the file he was reading and raised his hands in surrender. "No, I wasn't doing anything important, thank you for asking."

"We have a short list of candidates," Ruth held up the folders.

"So soon?"

"You wanted them yesterday morning," Lucas reminded him.

"Come on then, let's take a look." He held out his hand, beckoning with his fingers for Ruth to give him the folders.

"We've narrowed it down to ten." Lucas motioned to the pile.

"Ten? That's not narrowing down, that's still a pack." Harry took the file from the top and flipped through it.

"We're willing to weed some out."

Harry rubbed his chin and read out the first name. "Dimitri Levandis. That's Greek isn't it?" His eyes slid to Ruth.

She met his look, giving no indication at all that the information had any effect on her. "He speaks four languages."

"He's former SBS. Surveillance training. Highly recommended," Lucas volunteered.

"There are also four female candidates in contention." Ruth pointed to the files. "We could hire two women."

"Yes, we could." Harry agreed cautiously, sensing a trap.

"I think Ruth's point is that there will be operations where a female agent is better suited for the role," Lucas explained.

"I was looking at some of the operational notes from when I was away," Ruth continued. "There was a Section Chief, a Senior Officer, and two Junior Officers."

"We lost Ben too," said Lucas.

The name caught Harry off guard. God, the list was endless. He had known so little of Ben. It was said that during the War, (the one where the lines of good and evil were clear, the enemy over there, not found in one's own fold) seasoned soldiers in an effort to minimise emotional involvement, had refrained from learning the names of new recruits, knowing that the untested did not have long to live. Is that what he had become? So battle weary that he no longer cared to know anything of his team, resigned to the fact that each one would inevitably be lost to the machine. He let out a long sigh.

"It's not my decision it all has to do with the budget." He closed the file, folding his hands on top of the cover, bracketing off the topic.

"Yes, well, what is the price tag for the saving the nation these days?" Ruth asked tartly.

"Don't you think that comment would be better saved for the next Home Secretary?" Harry responded testily. Lucas sat with his arms folded, a bemused expression on his face. Ruth handed Harry another pile of folders. "What's this?"

"My selections for two Junior Intelligence Officers."

A muscle twitched in his neck. "I don't recall that being discussed."

"We're discussing it now. We've been operating at reduced levels for far too long. Something is bound to happen."

He clenched his teeth and gave her a stony look. He knew that the section was running at dangerously low level but he didn't need her to wave it in front of his face.

"We don't have the funds."

Lucas's head swivelled back to Ruth, watching the tennis match.

"We can find them." Ruth pulled out a folder. "I've been looking at the budget breakdown-"

Harry blinked. How many folders did the bloody woman have? "When do you have time to do these things?"

"Haven't you looked at the budget?" she asked incredulously as if he were a neglectful parent.

Lucas looked back at Harry, waiting for the next volley. He had nothing, leaving room for another shot from Ruth.

"I also think it wise to point out we're down an Admin officer."

Harry looked at her, his jaw slackening in disbelief at her prescient observation.

"Just give it all to me," he commanded sharply. If he was going to lose this battle, he needed to salvage what was left of his authority. "I'll take it all under consideration." He snapped the folders from Ruth's hand and tapped them on the desk with a flourish of dismissal. "If that's everything..."

Lucas looked a Ruth and she gave him a little nod.

"Yes," said Lucas. "I believe it is."

"Fine then. Get on with what we are supposed to be doing and find the rope to hang Hans Lindemann."

He dropped his head into his hands, the steps of the invaders retreating on the carpet, the door rattling on its track as it closed behind them. He scrunched his eyes in pain. Where was the reward for all this sacrifice?

"Harry?" A soft voice called to him.

Ruth was still in the room. Apparently, her list of demands was endless. Keeping his head down, he let out a deep sigh.

"What is there left to take?"

"I'd love to go to the Opera. With you."

Harry sat up in his chair, his head tilted in shock, wondering if he had heard her correctly.

"That is if you're still going," she quantified.

"Yes, I'm ... Yes." It was impossible for him to string together any more words.

She gave him a tiny smile and stood, waiting for him continue. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he realised she might need more information.

"It's ah...Friday."

"Yes, I know."

Of course, she did. She knew everything.

Before he could say anything else, she ducked her head and slipped through the door, vanishing into the Grid. He shook his head and sat back in his chair. For the second time in as many days, he found himself trying to fathom the workings of that woman's mind. He flexed his shoulders, feeling strangely free, the dark thoughts that surrounded him, disappearing under the sun of her of her acceptance. He decided not to question what had happened. If all it had taken was a bottle of sparkling water to get her to go out with him, he would have done it years ago.


	5. Chapter 5

Beware the fury of a patient man. The briefing room, usually oppressive with memory, was remarkably peaceful, allowing Harry to feel a strange sense of contentment,as he allowed his patience stretch beyond its normal limits. He sat back in his chair, lightly tapping his fingers on the smooth veneer of the table, watching Lucas sift through a file. He needed to make a decision regarding a Section Chief soon or fate would make it for him. Ruth stirred beside him, leaning forward on the table, her head resting in her hand, a fringe of hair hiding her profile as she busily scribbled notes. Her elbow sat enticingly close to his hand and he stretched out his fingers towards her, the hair on his knuckles electric as a delicious spark of frisson flowed through him. In only a few days, he would have her to himself at the Opera. He was on the verge of accidentally brushing her sleeve, when the door to the briefing room clattered open and Tariq hurried inside, a small object concealed in his hand. Attention back on the present moment, Harry motioned for him to take a seat and looked at the young man expectantly.

"Did you breach their defenses?"

"No, the level of encryption is too deep; it would take days to break through it."

"We don't have days."

"That's why we've come up with another plan," said Lucas.

"Do tell." Harry raised an eyebrow at Lucas.

Lucas aimed the remote at the screen and brought up a photo lifted from a corporate identification card; a middle-aged woman, her face framed by lanky brown hair and thick rimmed glasses. "Beatrice Wilson. She works at Romaldi's offices here, as a financial translator."

"And we're going to turn her?" Harry surmised.

"Not exactly. It looks like poor Beatrice has a touch of food poisoning and the agency is going to have to find a replacement."

Harry followed Lucas' gaze to Ruth. He kept his face impassive while his mind raged with the thought that there was no way in hell he would let her out of his sight. He crossed his arms and dipped his chin. "No."

"It would only be for one day," said Lucas.

"That's not enough time to sift through Lindemann's financial web," Harry pointed out.

"That's all we need." Tariq pressed his elbows on the table with excitement. "We get into their servers with a worm and get out before they even know we were there."

"And how do we do that?" Harry's arms remained skeptically crossed.

"With this." Tariq pulled out a ring decorated with an oversized green stone. He popped the stone off and flicked the bottom, revealing a tiny USB drive.

"And when do you propose we do this?" Harry gave a sidelong glance to the woman who sat beside him, assessing Ruth's reaction to the ring. There was nothing revealing in her posture or expression.

"The day of Lawrence's memorial," said Lucas.

"Absolutely not, that's out of the question. We'd be short on backup for Ruth."

Ruth half raised her hand. "Is no one going to ask me what I think?"

Harry ignored her, continuing to address Lucas. "Are you telling me there is no one else in this entire organisation that can translate Italian?"

"You wanted us to keep it contained," Lucas pointed out. "Especially, anything regarding Nightingale."

Harry drew an impatient breath. "It would leave us without a key member on the Grid." He had made up his mind he would not be persuaded.

"I don't think Nightingale is going to make a move at such a high-profile event." Lucas sat back in his chair, giving every indication that he was ready to go toe to toe with Harry.

"They had no qualms about disrupting a peace talk," Harry reminded him.

"What if they planted Romaldi as a decoy?" Ruth leant forward in her seat in an attempt to claim Harry's attention. "Our focus would be on the memorial service while they shuffled the next cache of money."

He refused to look at her. "There must be another way."

"There are no other agents." Lucas lifted his hands in abdication.

His posture stiffened, the tendons of his neck pulled taut, overcome by the suspicion that they had orchestrated the whole operation with Ruth to highlight the deficiencies of the section. They were backing him into a corner. He hated that feeling; it led to bad decisions and knee jerk reactions. If Ros were here, she would decide the whole question with one stingingly astute observation. But she was gone and so was his much-needed sounding board. His equilibrium was off, but what was left of his instinct told him to hold off on any decision. There was a reason he was reluctant to send Ruth out but he could not voice it in front of the team. He uncrossed his arms and shifted in his seat, finally turning to acknowledge the woman beside him.

"Ruth, do you have any details on the service."

She gave him a long look before slowly opening the file in front of her. She knew what he was doing, removing her from the sphere of field agent and placing her decidedly back in the bubble of an intelligence analyst.

"There are no other heads of state in attendance, although there are few ambassadors." She pointedly spoke to Lucas, leaving Harry out of her comments. "As well as a number of acquaintances of Lawrence's from Cambridge. Members from both sides of the House and their spouses." She flipped through the itinerary. "After St. Margaret's there's going to be a private family service."

"I didn't think he was married," said Tariq.

"His parents are still alive," Ruth explained.

Harry grimaced at the information. There was no greater punishment imaginable than to outlive one's children.

"Thankfully, the whole state funeral idea was nothing more than that." Ruth continued as she shuffled through papers. "But they are affording him special honours, having given his life to divert nuclear war between India and Pakistan"

Tariq jerked his head up. "Ros was the hero."

The room fell silent and Harry let the team sit with their thoughts. Only the people in that room would ever know what Ros had sacrificed. His chest tightened. He could not wallow; he could not lose himself to sentiment. Ros would have hated the idea and called him to task for it.

"Right," said Harry, steering them all back into the present. "The Home Office has been oddly reluctant to share information with us, keep an eye on them."

"Should we be suspicious?" asked Lucas.

"We should be suspicious of everyone." He gave a nod, dismissing the team.

Lucas and Tariq rose from their chairs and left the room. As he had anticipated, Ruth remained. She turned in her seat to face him. He had never been one to avoid confrontation but he would have given his eyeteeth to avoid this one.

"I can do it, Harry."

A small gust of air escaped his lips as he desperately searched for words that did not sound dismissive or patronising. "It's not that I don't believe in your skill..."

"If it were any other agent, you wouldn't hesitate to send them out."

"You haven't been in the field since ..." He halted the flow of his words, slowly placing his hand on the table, his fingers fanning out over the wood as he left her to fill in the rest of the sentence. She remained silent. He looked for another point to bolster his argument. "I only just got you back." She stiffened with a sharp intake of breath, and he curled his fingers into a fist, regretting the possessive quality of his words. "That is to say, you've only been back a short while and you're not ready."

"Do you mean not ready politically? Emotionally?"

The words were light, holding a faint hint of the camaraderie they had exchanged a few days before but he could not respond in kind; they hung before him like bait. He kept is attention focused on his hand, leaving the question unanswered.

"You're worried about me psychologically then?"

She was too clever by half. The air between them cooled as she folded her arms across her stomach, her head tilted in defiance, daring him to contradict her.

He bent towards her, his voice lowered in order to impart the sensitivity she deserved. "The other night at dinner, when you saw the fish-"

The change in her demeanour was instantaneous, his words having the effect of a slap. She sat back her eyes wide with disbelief. "That moment was private," she whispered.

"Nothing in this business is private." The observation fell from his mouth before his mind had time to calculate which way the words would slice.

"So we're just business then?"

Shit. What had he done? His last words the final knot in the noose, threatening to strangle whatever burgeoning feelings she might hold for him. He clenched his fist, vainly grasping for any thread that would stop their conversation from falling into an abyss from whence he could not recover. His nails dug into the palm of his hand. He was her superior; he had a duty of care towards her.

"You would be alone, there might be memories..."

"You've been reading my psych eval."

Her voice held that eerily flat quality she had displayed at the restaurant. On that night, he had secretly commended her ability to cleave off emotion but now that he was on the receiving end, it sent a chill down his spine. He looked at her with the full authority of his position. She held his eyes, hard and unyielding, waiting for him to back down. He had no idea how to handle this woman, this Ruth of flint and steel. He opened and closed his fist. He could not give in.

"I'm your boss, Ruth."

"Yes, you are." She delivered her words with a jarring finality.

She stood up with a regality befitting a queen, as he sat head bowed, the knave of despair. With no other, words she exited, leaving him to sit with his hollow victory. His fist drove down on the table. Damn. What was he supposed to do? On paper, she was cleared for duty but reality was a far harsher arena. She was right, he was biased. How many other agents had he willingly sent into the field, knowing that their psyches were one-step away from dissolving? Tom? Adam? How many others had he pushed beyond endurance? By all accounts, none of them was truly well and whole. They were all broken, held together with string and paste, cracks covered with plasters, building shells for protection that in the end only served to keep others out. They were boss and employee, nothing more. He sighed. If only they were that simple. The problem being that what was between them had no name. He tapped his knuckles on the table. He could not lose her again but there was no one else. In the past, there had been a seamless ebb a flow of personnel, a pool of prospective agents waiting in the wings, familiar with the Grid and the team. Others brought on by fortuitous circumstance. Where were they now? The Section had become too insular. He had become too insular. He had to put the operation first.

He rose from his chair, his jacket pulling across his back, restricting his movements. He flexed his shoulders as he moved across the Grid, trying to alleviate the tension. He caught Lucas' eye as he passed the agent's desk and the younger man followed him into the office. He did not offer up a seat but quickly spoke before he had a chance to change his mind.

"Prepare an airtight legend, get her up to speed and then we'll see about sending her out."

Lucas nodded.

"And she needs a get out clause," Harry added.

"Of course."

Harry dropped heavily into his chair, the weight of his coat dragging him down. He waited for Lucas to leave.

"Listen, Harry, I know what she means to you."

Harry tilted his head, mouth parted with incredulity, stunned that Lucas would ever broach such a sensitive subject. The agent was undaunted by Harry's reaction.

"I know what it's like to lose someone," Lucas said quietly, "To finally have them back only to find they are out of reach."

Harry closed his eyes, grimacing as though a bandage and been ripped off an unhealed wound. A bead of anger coiled in his stomach and he opened his eyes, intending to take a strip off the other man. Lucas looked back at him, eyes unwavering; there was no malice in his gaze, no intent to harm. They were two men who bore the scars of lost love. Perhaps Lucas had the grit to be section chief after all. He certainly had intuition.

"The legend goes through me." Harry turned away dismissively. Admit nothing.

...

Harry planted himself squarely in front of Ruth's desk, leaving no doubt as to his presence. She slowly raised her eyes to him, her expression containing no trace of her usual warmth. He cocked his head towards his office and walked away. She got up and followed him. As he slid the door closed, he motioned for her to take a seat and then crossed to his own chair. He sat, studying her, letting the silence grow between them, waiting to see if she would fill it with nervous babble. He didn't know why he was using interrogation techniques on her - putting on a persona perhaps, in order to distance him from any emotional connection. She did not succumb to the pressure of the silence but remained quiet. That was a good sign.

"Lucas tells me they've created a legend for you."

She nodded.

"Do you have it down?" He opened the folder containing the paperwork for her identity.

"I think so."

"You think so?" He would not go easy on her.

"Yes, I know it."

Tell me a bit about yourself," he traced his finger over the information in front of him. "Alison."

"We're not seriously doing this?" She gave him a puzzled look as if he were playing a joke.

"I'm giving you a chance to prove me wrong. And you know I don't like to be wrong." This time, his words were baited.

"Alison Chambers." She sat up straight in her chair. "I'm thirty-eight, divorced, no children, Masters from Cambridge in translation-"

"Yes, yes, that's all well and good." Harry closed the file with a dramatic sweep. "But those are facts and I know you have a good memory."

"I'm only going in for a day, Harry."

He slapped his palm on top of the folder. "That's exactly the kind of flippant thinking that will get you in trouble. It has to be part of you, under your skin. So ingrained that no one can peel it away. Live it, think it, breathe it." He paused to let his words sink in. "Let's start again, shall we." He canted his head, his eyes boring straight into hers, each word delivered with deliberate intent. "Who are you?"

Her eyes held his, but instead of the frostiness he expected, they grew soft and surprisingly defenceless. Her gaze fell and she bit her bottom lip, her chest moving quickly at the shallowness of her breath, her entire demeanour exuding a vulnerability that surprised him. There was no hardness, no shell. He sat back in his chair, disconcerted by the effect his words had on her. In his effort to poke holes in her legend, he had inadvertently struck a wound. Had she asked herself the same question? She had given up her identity twice, lost everything, everyone. Who was she? He wanted to reach out and bring her back from the edge of whatever precipice his question had pushed her toward but he stopped. He would not allow himself to be pulled into the emotion of the moment. If she wanted to be a field agent, she had to face these questions. Better that it happen now than when she was in Romaldi's office. He cleared his throat, resetting the conversation.

"Why did you get divorced?"

"Who's going to ask that?" She roused herself, an edge of combativeness to her voice.

"Arthur from accounting."

"So you're now you're Arthur from accounting?"

"This is a pretty thin legend." He lifted the folder and waved it in the air.

Her eyes darted out to the Grid and then back. "We met in school and grew apart."

"Don't look away. It tells me you're thinking." He tapped the desk to bring her attention back. "Why didn't you have children?"

"I wanted a career."

He nodded, pleased that the mention of children had not caused a reaction.

"Why financial translation?"

"My father was an accountant and I wanted to study languages. It was a good compromise."

"Do you always compromise?"

"No, that's why I'm divorced."

She held his eyes in challenge, one eyebrow slightly raised. His heartbeat accelerated, excited by the speed of her wit. He stepped it up a notch.

"Are you seeing anyone now?"

"It's very new."

"What does he do?"

"Civil servant."

"What department?

"Environment, Food and Rural Affairs."

His heart stopped. Her expression remained neutral. This time, it was her eyes that drilled into him. He blinked first.

"It's new, you say?"

"But we've known each other a long time."

He had the distinct feeling that she was playing with him. Always make the cover story as close to reality as possible. She was talking about him, of that he was certain. They had crossed a boundary in the conversation, the business and the personal intertwined in such a manner that he could not untangle it. Was she talking to him as Ruth or Alison? It was on the tip of his tongue to ask if she was still going to the Opera with him when she spoke.

"Is that everything?"

He sat for a moment, re-evaluating her determination, begrudgingly admitting to himself that perhaps she had the potential to hold her own out in the field.

"Yes, thank you for humouring me."

She stood up, and out of a sense of outdated chivalry, he rose with her. He crossed over to the door and reached across the panel to open it but stopped, leaving her to stand corralled in the crook of his arm. He kept her there, waiting, the chrome of the handle smooth beneath his fingers. Her gaze remained focused on his sleeve. He closed his eyes. The cloud of perfume that followed her throughout the day, now muted by the lateness of the hour, a baser scent seeping into his consciousness. His fingertips rubbed along the metal handle, his hand itching to move the short distance to her hip and pull her around into him. He wanted to hold her, tell her that everything would be all right, that he would protect her. He knew he couldn't, he had to let her be her own person. He stood, wanting to ask her if everything was all right between them but he didn't know how to phrase it, the question would leave him too vulnerable. Endless minutes ticked on.

"You have to let me go sometime," she told him quietly.

What kind of relationship could he ever expect to have with a woman whom he had twice in one day drawn through an emotional gristmill? If they were involved, how could he ever knowingly send her into danger? His grip tightened on the door handle. Her weight shifted but her eyes remained fixed on his arm.

"I'm a spy, Harry," she whispered. "That's who I am.

He opened the door and let her go.


	6. Chapter 6

The interior of the church was weighted with the scent of polished wood and forgotten sins. Pockets of sightseers moved about quietly, walking along the aisles with hushed reverence, possessing an obeisance that Harry could never muster. The fluted columns and vaulted arches should have stirred his soul, elevated him to a higher plane of human existence, but he remained strangely unmoved. If there was a greater being, it had yet to make itself known to him, for he had only born witness to the baser instincts of man. Churches were best for dead drops and clandestine meets, for keeping secrets, not giving them up. He did not want to contemplate the secrets that darkened his soul - it was a lost cause. The penance involved in saving it would last far longer than the amount of life he had remaining. If there was a place of eternal rest it belonged to the innocent.

He stood between the Rector of St Margaret's and Miles Stanhope, Lucas rounding out the foursome, their party sequestered behind a pillar. Staccato notes from the organ peppered the background, masking their conversation but they kept their voices lowered. They had dealt with the more classified aspects of their business in the Rector's office and were now working their way through the logistics of the service. Harry rocked back and forth on his heels, feeling uncomfortably out of place. Lucas listened intently to the Rector, his solicitous demeanour no doubt a product of his upbringing. Ideally, a Section Chief and a senior officer should do the inspection but he felt the need to be on the ground for this operation. He was slowly bending to the idea of Lucas as Section Chief but one never really knew the mettle of an officer until they were tested. He could only stall for so long in rebuilding the Section.

Harry was lulled into a half-trance by the carefully modulated tone of the Rector. His eyes wandered above the altar to a stained glass window, the voices of the other men fading as the sound of the organ filled his ears. Bach? Handel? He couldn't place the melody. The sun filtered through the coloured panes, highlighting motes of dust as they swirled in the light. The organ hit a high note and his eyes blurred, the window fragmenting into pieces of riotous colour. The hair on the back of his neck prickled and he caught his breath, his chest opening up as if he were on the edge giant chasm. The sensation passed and he wiped his forehead, blaming the heat. He half turned his head at the suspicion that he someone was watching him. Either that or he was having a heart attack and he would rather come down on the side of surveillance.

"As long as it's unobtrusive."

Harry started, the conversation having moved on without him. The Rector looked at him expectantly.

"Our presence," Lucas clarified for Harry's benefit.

"We're talking about national security." With no idea of the subject, Harry fell back on his reliable Section Head rhetoric.

"We are all secure here." The Rector leaned toward Harry, a benevolent smile on his face.

It took all of Harry's self-control not to throttle the man. Fighting with the devil was easy, fighting with saints was hard. "We will be as invisible as we always are."

"Sir Harry will be here tomorrow, keeping everything well in hand." Stanhope's smile beamed around the group.

Harry mustered a tepid smile in response, a bead of sweat trailing down his temple. He needed to get out of the building. Either he was having a reaction to it or it was on the verge of expunging him. With their business concluded, the Rector and the Home Secretary made their farewells. Harry loosened his tie the moment they were out of sight. He kept his voice low, lest the panels had ears.

"I'm always distrustful of the pious. They're like politicians, the more self-righteous they are, the more they have to hide."

"Religion and politics are the same thing," said Lucas. Harry lifted an eyebrow at the statement. Lucas shrugged his shoulders. "Blake." He saw Harry's confusion. "The poet. Not the former Home Secretary."

"Do you have everything you need here?"

"Yes. I've got a team inside and out on the street. Tariq has eyes in both places. I'm going to do another sweep."

Harry nodded. "Good. I'll see you back at the Grid."

Lucas walked away, following the path of the Rector and Home Secretary, leaving Harry to stand with his thoughts. The organ carried on, the notes floating about the church. He took one last look at the window, its stained panels remaining stubbornly unchanged, the colours reassuringly solid, looking down on him without judgement. He squinted at it in an attempt to recapture his earlier experience but there was no soaring elation, no epiphany, only a curious feeling of emptiness. It must have been the heat.

From habit long ingrained, his eyes gave a cursory sweep over the church, surveying the various inhabitants of the pews. Seeing nothing untoward, he headed down the aisle at a quick pace, not wanting to stay in the sanctuary any longer than necessary. Half way up the aisle, he stopped in mid-stride overcome by the urge to look up. At the far side of the church almost hidden in the shadows sat Ruth. He would have missed her if not for the strange pull to glance in that direction. He walked over to the end of the row, waiting for her to notice him but she did not look up. He silently moved along the bench and took the seat beside her. She made no motion to acknowledge his presence but kept her head bowed, her hands clasped in her lap as if in prayer. Did she believe in heaven and hell and the promise of redemption? He had given up on religion and its attendant salvation; he had assumed everyone he knew also had the same predilection.

With her head still bent, she spoke to him in a low voice. "It's always much cooler inside a church, isn't it? I think it has something to do with the rarefied air of the ages, never knowing the world outside."

"Are you sightseeing?" he asked, at a loss as to why she should be there.

She raised her head, looking out over the church, her eyes following the ascent of the pillars, her neck exposed as she strained to look at the ceiling. She took a deep breath and leant back in her seat.

"I haven't been in a church since Danny."

They had sat like this before, and he had torn her away from her mourning on that day, just as he had recently ripped her away from her other life. The wood of the pew creaked softly as he moved towards her, his voice matching her whispered hush. "I've been in a church, but not necessarily for religious reasons.

"I suppose shadowy naves are made for secrets."

"How did you know I would be here?" He placed his hands in his lap, rubbing his thumb as if he were rubbing out a memory.

"I just knew."

His fingers stilled. "I could have used the other exit. Missed you entirely."

"But you didn't."

A few days earlier, he had congratulated himself on his ability to summon her with a single nod but apparently, it worked both ways, this subtle pull between them. Bound by a joint history, knowing where the other one was, an intricate tapestry of shared events weaving them together.

"There is so much history here." She spoke as if picking up on the thread of his thoughts. She ran her finger along the gleaming wood of the pew in front of her. "People come and go but this building remains, ravaged and repaired, but still standing."

How many supports had he lost over the years and yet he remained resolutely standing? His foundation was cracked, full of fissures and chinks. She was his last buttress; if he lost her, his walls would crumble.

"Were you married in a church, Harry?"

The question caught him off guard and he contemplated his answer, unsure why she was asking. _When my love swears she is made of truth._ The arrogance of youth, how he had tempted fate in choosing that particular sonnet for the reading at his wedding. He squirmed in his seat; his marriage was a subject he did not like to dwell on. That part of him belonged to a different life, another man.

"Yes, I was."

"I suppose every young girl dreams of a church wedding."

She had been young once, but he could not imagine her as a girl. Had that been her dream? Curiosity roused, he wanted to know the real reason she had not married George and if she had forsaken the institution altogether. Before he could ask, she spoke again.

"I suppose a church wedding doesn't necessarily mean anything these days."

He pursed his lips, wondering if she was referring to the demise of his own marriage, feeling the unintentional smart of her words.

She pointed to the front of the church. "That window was commissioned for Henry VIII and Anne Boylen and look how they turned out." She gave him an ironic half-smile as her eyes held his. She turned away, remembering the reason she had come. "I had lunch with Gwen, lovely woman. She tells me that Stanhope has a meeting scheduled with Romaldi and Clarence Bancroft.

"Bancroft?" The name brought Harry's mind immediately back to business. "He's a member of the Home Committee."

She nodded. "And a possible candidate for Home Secretary."

"Is that their gambit? Another Home Secretary in their pocket."

"We still don't know if Lawrence was in their pocket."

"We need a list of all the candidates being floated about for the office." He leaned wearily back in his seat. "A nation can survive its fools but not the enemy within," he mused, paraphrasing Cicero. "He infects the body politic."

The organ stopped and silence rushed in to fill the space, accentuating the smallest noise including the soft rhythm of their breaths.

"I'm scared, Harry," she confessed, her voice barely audible. "About tomorrow."

He leaned in to hear her, his voice lowered to match hers. "That's a good thing. Little adrenaline, keeps you on your toes."

"Adrenaline," she echoed.

"You'll be fine. I know you can do it."

"A bit of a shift from my earlier cockiness, isn't it?"

She tilted her head as she looked up at him, exposing the marble column of her throat. He looked down into her eyes, framed by the fine arch of her brow. He lost himself in their depths, their colour changing from blue, to green to grey, her pupils expanding and contracting, his chest swelling in response. The evolving colours of her iris seemed to fragment and then reassemble back to the intense blue he knew so well. The window to her soul. Her hand rested on her lap, and he instinctively reached over to cover it with the bulk of his own. It was small, barely knuckle and bone, lost under the weight of his giant paw. He did not immediately take his hand away but let it rest on hers, drawing his own comfort from her touch.

"Do they ever leave us?" She gravitated towards him like a moon, her shoulder pressing into his. "Danny? Jo?"

He wanted to say yes, to assure her that their faces would fade into distant memory but that would be a lie. They lurked in the corners of one's life, coming out at the most inopportune times. He would not burden her with those thoughts. He sighed and squeezed her hand. To his surprise, she returned the pressure and his breathing changed to a deep and steady flow, a weight lifting from his chest. Her touch held an elment of forgiveness, a reprieve for his transgressions of the other day. Perhaps in time she could forgive him his greater sins.

He wanted to stay cloistered with her, locked away in this sanctuary but they could not remain there forever. "Someone will miss us soon."

She extracted her hand from his and he ached at its loss. He rose, edging out of the pew, standing to one side to let her walk before him. She stopped in front of him and he rested his hand on the curved end post of the bench in an effort to stop himself from leaning into her.

"Do you really have two season tickets to the opera?" she asked.

Once again, her question caught him unawares. She was looking at his lips.

"Are you testing me to see if I would commit blasphemy in a church?"

She shrugged. "I don't think a church would stop you."

He smiled at her faith in his irreverence. "I didn't think you would still want to go with me."

"I haven't been out in such a long time. I would think after everything a diversion would do us both good."

They walked along the aisle together, hands lightly brushing as their arms swung by their sides. The emptiness inside him dissipating, replaced by a sense of wonder and anticipation. Perhaps the old husk that he inhabited could split open and a soul that he did not know he had could rise from it. He closed his eyes. His salvation did not lay in brick and mortar but in a sanctuary far more corporeal.

...

The swirl of cream stayed stubbornly on top of Harry's coffee refusing to blend in even as his spoon clinked the around the mug. A wiser man would have checked the expiry date. The hour was late and the idea of braving the night to find a shop was remarkably unappealing, forcing him to make do with the coffee from the Grid's tiny kitchenette. Perhaps Ruth with all her fiduciary acumen could find money in the budget for a decent coffee maker.

"You could try some scotch in it." Ruth appeared at his elbow, looking into his cup.

He looked down at her, marvelling at how his mere thoughts had the ability to summon her, silently bemoaning the fact that the talent never manifested itself in certain comfortable areas of his own home. The tip of one ear peaked through the curtain of her hair, a wayward strand refusing to follow the direction of the rest, as stubbornly resistant as the woman herself. He gripped the handle of his mug tighter.

"Don't think I'm not tempted."

She carried on seemly unaware of any effect she might have on him and held up her cup, motioning it towards the sink so he would let her through to wash it. She ran the faucet, and soaped up the mug.

"You shouldn't drink so much coffee, stops you from sleeping."

"How do you know I have trouble sleeping?" He leaned back against the counter.

"Don't we all?" Her eyes met his, their corners crinkled teasingly. As she held his gaze, her eyes changed, widening, revealing the subtle shifts of colour he had noticed earlier. The cup languished forgotten under the water; the faucet left to run idly on in the background until she remembered what she was doing and turned it off. "I sent a list of possible candidates for Home Secretary to you."

He nodded handing her a dishtowel, feeling oddly domestic. "Technically, we don't to vet candidates..."

"But if a flag should appear..." Ruth continued his thought.

"We'd have to alert the proper authorities."

"Without ruining his career."

"Let's see how naughty he's been. When one plays with matches..."

She placed her cup in the cupboard. "I'm done for the day. I'll be back tomorrow, sometime in the evening, I should think. " Smoothing down her skirt, she brushed the last few drops of water from her hands, pausing for a moment before she took a step towards the door.

"I won't see you in the morning?" He pushed himself away from the counter, moving to block her exit.

"No, I'm going straight to Romaldi's offices."

"Keep your head down and you'll be fine."

"What could possibly happen?" She gave him a tremulous smile, each of them knowing exactly what could happen.

"Do you need to go over anything?"

"No, no, I'm good."

He looked at her intently, trying to think of something else to say to keep her there, an important piece of information, a word of advice. He could always insist that they review her legend. In lieu of anything concrete to say, he took a step towards her.

"You've got the ring?"

"Yes." She pulled it out from the pocket of her skirt. "I didn't want to forget it."

He took it from her hand, opening the clasp to confirm the USB drive was inside and then snapped it shut. "Tariq's letting you take it?"

"I had to sign away my first born." She looked at him with a small smile, giving no indication that the phrase had any other meaning to her.

He held the ring up intending to give it back to her but when she moved to retrieve it he quickly raised his free hand and captured her smaller one in his grip. He held her hand suspended between their chests, giving no thought as to who might walk in and find them. He examined the skin of her fingers, taut across the knuckles, remembering the feel of the tiny mountains beneath his palm. If they were in any other time, any other place, he would lean in and kiss them, turn her hand over and kiss the pulse at her wrist. His hand tightened on hers, the thought of her pulse beating against his sending a current of desire through his veins. She stood very still, lips parted, chest barely moving with shallow breaths, waiting. He brought the ring to her hand, hovering suggestively above her fingers. In the cramped kitchenette, under the glare of the fluorescent light, thoughts came to him unbidden, of her beside him in the darkness of the church, the strange sensation of weightlessness she had stirred within him. With gentle pressure, he pressed his thumb on the top of her hand, causing her fingers slowly uncurl, stretching out toward him. It was the wrong hand and the wrong finger and most definitely the wrong notion but he continued on, not caring about the implications of his gesture. With a quiet solemnity, he gently slid the ring on her index finger. He dropped his head closer to hers.

"Wouldn't want you to lose it," he whispered.

She closed her eyes and shivered, subtly swaying into him, forearms touching, bodies separated only by the width of their joined hands. It would be so easy to let his lips brush against her temple, mark a path along her cheek, and find the sweetness of her mouth. He swallowed hard and gritted his teeth. He had to stop this nonsense; those thoughts were the purview of poets and lovers. They were spies. The ring meant nothing. How many times had his wedding ring come off? How many times had he worn one as a legend? It was merely a piece of gadgetry designed to infiltrate a system. If pressed, he would have to admit that what had happened between them earlier in the church was nothing more than one colleague comforting another.

"Take care of yourself."

His breath brushed across her cheek, touching her skin where his lips could not. She opened her eyes to him, revealing the darkest gaze, seductive and inviting. He released her hand as if it was on fire, and it crossed his mind that it very well may be, for he was playing with tinder that he was dangerously close to igniting. Clearing his throat, he quickly turned away, not trusting himself to stay any longer. He felt her eyes on his back as he crossed the Grid. He absently adjusted the knot in his tie, finding it hard to breathe, knowing that one day he would not have the strength to leave.


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N - Sincerest thanks to all of you who continue to read this little fic and to those of you who have taken the time to review. Last time round, I forgot to thank the lovely transmissonends64 for sharing a few tidbits from Harry's Diary that I used in the previous chapter. I think after the next chapter I may bump the rating up just to be on the safe side. Hope you find more to enjoy. Cheers!_

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The tide of the Grid flowed around him, a constant stream of activity, moving on its own course, stopping for no one. One day in the future, someone else would stand in his spot, issuing commands, barking orders, paying the price for decisions made. Every act destined to be repeated in the great echo chamber of time even as his own life was a succession of reoccurring events. Mistakes made, lessons learned, colleagues lost. His eyes landed on Ros' desk, still standing stubbornly vacant. He looked away from it, unwilling to fall under its shadow. As he turned around, his eyes alighted on Ruth's empty chair and before he could stop it, a wave of painful memory surged inside him. It had all happened before, she had left him, and he had stood alone, everything in his world carrying on without her. The entire room was awash in loss and his failings. He was fast coming to the conclusion that it was time for him to leave. His hands were dirty, his instincts shot, and he was left immobilised by his inability to replace Ros.

He rubbed his brow. He needed to pull himself together. He still had Ruth, she had not left him again; she was merely on an operation. She would be back by evening. She was safe, no harm would befall her. He needed to focus on the present. He walked over to the bank of monitors where Tariq sat.

"Has she arrived?"

Tariq turned to the monitors displaying the CCTV coverage in front of Romaldi's office tower. "It's only eight-forty. She's not due in until nine. I'll let you know when she arrives."

"I'll wait."

Tariq shrugged his shoulders and turned around to the other monitors, checking the feeds for Lawrence's service, leaving Harry to stare fixedly at the screen.

It's wasn't too late; he could pull her out and cancel the operation. He closed his eyes trying to discern what his gut was telling him. He didn't know all the facts, wasn't familiar enough with the players. He would have to trust the legend they had created and her own ingenuity should any crisis arise. He opened his eyes in time to see a small dark figure enter from the corner of the screen. Ruth split off from the main crowd and then moved up the steps of the office building. A second camera showed her at a closer angle. She looked down, searching through her bag and bumped into a man. He grabbed her arm to stop her from falling. Harry held his breath. They stood talking, Ruth smiling up into the man's face, giving a nervous laugh, her hand touching his arm. Was she flirting? After a brief conversation, they moved to the entrance of the building, the man holding the door open for Ruth as she entered.

"She's in," Tariq commented, having silently watched along with Harry

"Your powers of observation are second only to your skills in maths." Harry motioned to the monitor. "Find out who that man was."

"There's nothing we can do now till she leaves at five," Tariq advised as he isolated the frame and dumped the image of the unknown man into the facial recognition software.

Harry nodded. "What's her get out clause?"

"Sick mother."

"Does she have a mobile?"

"The mother?" Tariq asked.

Harry pursed his lips and gave Tariq a withering look. "No. Ruth."

"Outside devices won't work in the building." Tariq continued to type, his attention only half on Harry.

"Then how will we know if she needs to get out?"

"She should have access to their landlines." Tariq gave the keyboard one final tap. "The man is Vincent Leslie. Forty-three. Works in Romaldi's IT department."

Harry had no idea what to do with the information but he was glad that he had it.

"You let me know if anything happens. Anything."

He retired to his office, hoping to muster sufficient intestinal fortitude to spend an afternoon in the company of those he usually did his best to avoid. As he sat in his chair, he looked out onto the Grid, Ruth's empty chair once again falling within his eye line. He tried to ignore the nagging seed of worry taking root in his stomach.

...

The church, a sanctuary to him only the day before, was now claustrophobic and stiflingly hot. Intermittent coughs punctuated the air along with the faint rustling of paper; members of the congregation using the order of service as makeshift fans. Harry rested his elbow on his knee, holding his head in his hand, half-listening to a droning voice recite a prayer, invoking his own plea that the day would pass without incident. The crowd sat up en masse and his head lifted with the others. He looked out over a sea of dark suits, ties of red and blue, his black, the one he always used for these occasions.

The church overflowed with bureaucratic well-wishers, attending either out of duty, or influence, or political motivation. Did any of them really know Andrew Lawrence the man? He shifted in his seat, the hardness of the pew as unrelenting as his thoughts. Would it be like this at his funeral? Who would truly mourn him? Jane? His children? Ruth? His eyes roamed over the congregation noting how many Members of Parliament sat alongside their wives, partnered off in their complacent lives. Where was his partner? She should be there with him, sitting by his weight of loneliness pressed down on him. His eyes rose to the stained glass window high above the altar, and he stared at it, trying to conjure up the sense of peace he had felt the day before. It eluded him.

The congregation stood in a sea of uneven waves, voices raised in a hymn, their singing like the cawing of gulls. He spotted Stanhope standing next to Clarence Bancroft. He casually glanced back to see Romaldi a few pews behind. He took solace in the fact that Romaldi was not in his office today. The hymn concluded, Harry having barely paid attention to the proceedings and they all sat once more. He patted the mobile in his pocket, reassuring himself that it was there. He was not on comms, his phone was set to vibrate. He was in limbo between two operations, dependent on others for information.

He sat back, resigning himself to the discomfort of the pew and closed his eyes, letting his mind wander to thoughts of Ruth. What was she doing now? Sitting at a desk pushing papers he hoped. Unbeckoned, an image arose in his mind of her on a desk, of papers falling off and, in that most sacred of places, he let his mind wander to the profane. What did it matter, his soul was already a lost. He imagined her lips, her hair, the column of her throat. Illicit thoughts that he had entertained about her from years past, so long packed up and locked away, spilled out, rising to the surface of his consciousness. In that long ago time, he had taken every day with her for granted. Was he braver now? He sighed. Not even St. George could slay the dragon of combined misery stood between them.

The service ended and the congregation stood, the event transitioning into a modem for political hobnobbing with the obligatory exchange of greetings and pumping of hands. The crowd moved slowly towards the doors and he found himself deposited in the sunlight standing alongside Richard Dolby. They stood as everyone else did, exchanging pleasantries, surveying the crowd, assessing the conversational value of the assembled personage. Harry immediately reached for his mobile, checking the screen and flicking through messages. Nothing. Dolby tapped Harry with his elbow. Harry looked up as Miles Stanhope and another man approached them.

"All's well then?" Stanhope asked.

"Everything's in order," Dolby responded obligingly, far better at politicking than Harry could ever be. He motioned to the man who stood beside Stanhope. "Harry, you know Clarence Bancroft."

"Indeed, we have passed in the halls many times," Harry responded keeping his tone neutral.

"Both Whitehall and concert," Bancroft said, giving Harry a friendly nod. "Missed you at the last performance."

"Someone has to look after the shop." He looked at Bancroft speculatively, watching for any signs of duplicity.

Bancroft looked around with a patrician air of detachment. "These things are always tedious, aren't they?"

Harry gave him a blank look. "Honouring a life given in the name of one's country is never tedious."

Dolby cleared his throat and looked away, suppressing a smile. Stanhope once again looked like he was in the middle of a minefield. Bancroft eyed Harry warily, his posture stiffening, at tight smile stretching across his face.

"Sorry to hear about your officer," said Bancroft, attempting to regain ground. "I hear she was remarkable."

"She was." He gave Bancroft nothing else. Let him stew in his tactless comment, a politician should know better.

"Ah look it's... if you'll excuse me." Bancroft walked away, forgoing all diplomacy in the situation, leaving Stanhope to trail behind him.

"Always winning friends and influencing people, aren't we Harry?" Dolby tilted his head, his voice lowered to a conspiratorial volume. "He's angling for Secretary."

"I know."

"You don't sound impressed. Something you care to share?"

"Not at the moment."

"We need to discuss your last report. There are a few irregularities, to say the least." Dolby pulled out his phone and scrolled through his calendar. "Tomorrow at three?" He raised an eyebrow at Harry.

"Should I bring the guillotine?"

"Nothing so drastic, the fruits of the operation did outweigh the loss."

Harry quickly looked away, his throat constricting. Is that what Ros had been reduced to, an operational loss? Before he could school Dolby on exactly how great a loss Ros was to the Service, the dark head of Lucas emerged above the crowd. The agent caught Harry's eye.

"I have to speak to one of my officers," Harry said, extracting himself from the conversation.

"And we need to talk about a new Section Chief," Dolby called out after Harry's retreating back.

Harry continued over to Lucas, ignoring Dolby's last comment. He spoke to his agent while keeping a look out over the crowd.

"All good?"

"Very quiet," Lucas assured him.

"Ruth?"

"Haven't heard anything. I wouldn't take that as a bad sign."

Harry reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone once again. If she were in trouble she wouldn't call him, she would contact the Grid. A tendril of worry grew inside of him, refusing to be choked off by any rational thought.

...

He sat at his desk, fingers tapping the laminated wood, doing his best not to look at his watch for the twentieth time. It was past seven. She was late. Tariq had combed through the CCTV in front of the building to no avail. She had not left the office tower. Her mobile had gone unanswered. There were no sign that she had successfully uploaded the USB containing the virus to Romaldi's severs. He should have listened to his instinct. It was a mistake to send her. The ticking of his watch grew louder, winding his apprehension tighter, each passing minute adding fuel to his anger. He had already yelled a Lucas and torn a strip of Tariq, everyone else had the sense to flee when they saw him.

Tariq poked his head around the doorway of Harry's office. "She's here." He barely paused before he was out again.

Harry closed his eyes and let out a long sigh of relief. He quickly rose from his seat and followed the young man to the briefing room. Striding into the room, he found Ruth calmly sitting in a chair, Lucas at her side, leaning against the table. He wanted to simultaneously hug her to his chest and punish her for putting him through such worry. He came to a stop and stood before her, all politeness pushed aside.

"What hell happened?"

"Nothing. I'm fine, everything is all right."

Ruth looked at him, eyes bright, her whole demeanour exuding the glow of a race well run and finished. He knew that look. Adrenaline.

"There was a bit of a hitch," said Lucas

"The USB stick didn't work." Ruth held up the ring.

"So this was all for naught." Harry crossed his arms, finding no satisfaction in being proved right.

"No, I figured out a way in."

Tariq reached over to Ruth and took the ring from her hand. Harry quelled the urge to snatch it back from him, using every ounce of his reserve to dampen the anger that was rising inside him. He had placed it on her finger the day before but the sentiment had obviously meant nothing to her evidenced by the cavalier way she handed over. She carried on.

"After what I thought was a suitable amount of time, I plugged in the USB stick, but the system wouldn't recognise it. I realised that they had disabled any external drives. I sat for a while staring at my screen and then I did everything I could to get myself locked out of them system. When I did, I called Vincent."

"The IT fellow," Harry said, his voice laced with suspicion.

"How did you know?"

"We saw you run into him," Tariq volunteered.

"Yes, well, that was fortuitous as he gave me his card and said to ring him if I needed any help with my system."

"Haven't heard that line before," Lucas commented wryly.

Harry flashed him a look and turned back to Ruth. "Go on."

"So he when arrived at my workstation, I suggested that he might need to reset the BIOS, hoping that I could get his password.

"Good move." Tariq nodded at her in appreciation.

"It didn't work. But I noticed that he had a little flash drive on his keychain. We were chatting and I said I was recently divorced and hadn't gotten out much, he asked if I'd like to go for a drink after work and I said yes and that's why I'm late."

"You should have phoned us," Lucas reprimanded.

"The bar was part of the complex and I couldn't get my phone to work."

Harry looked at her incredulously. "You went for a drink?" The calmness of his words masked his growing anger, dangerously straining at rivets of his control. Any thought of worry completely forgotten.

"And I got this." She pulled out a flash drive, holding it aloft with the thieving pride of Prometheus. "I lifted it from his keychain."

"What is it?" asked Lucas.

"I have no idea but I thought it might help us."

"Brilliant." Tariq snatched up the flash drive and ran out of the room, Lucas following hot on his heels. Ruth rose from her chair and took a step to join them.

"Do you realise how dangerous that was?" His voice was deceptively calm, his words halting her in her tracks.

"It was a risk, I know-" Ruth stammered.

"You went off piste." He moved towards her and she stepped back, coming up against the table.

"It's not as if any lives weren't at stake."

"Yours was."

"Not every operation ends in death, Harry."

"They know who you are!" His palm slapped down on the table with a furious crash, barely missing her arm, causing her to flinch.

"I don't know why you're upset. I'm here, aren't I?" The injustice of his anger overrode her fear of him and her voice rose defensively. "How about 'Job well done, Ruth'?"

"You know nothing about that man." He brought his face closer to hers, the tendons in his neck straining as he fought to reign in his anger.

"He was just a lonely man from the systems department." She drew herself up to her full height, her tone matching his.

"For Christ sake, Ruth, so was Andrew Forestal!" His anger picked up speed, swirling like a funnel cloud. "We know how these people work. They will stop at nothing. They took Ros and I'll be damned if I lose you too!"

The force of his words stirred the strands of hair at her temple. She looked back at him, eyes shining with defiance, her skin flushed from the heady rush of adrenaline, more alive and beautiful than he had seen her in the entire time she had been back. He knew that feeling of invincibility, dancing with danger and coming away unscathed. Her chest heaved with an anger of her own, the movement catching his eyes, drawing his gaze down to her breasts. He shifted toward her and whether by accident or intent, his thigh brushed against hers, the sound of her breath sharp in his ears . He dragged his gaze back up to her mouth, her lips parting as her tongue flicked out over them, his own mouth becoming dry in response. He slowly raised his eyes to hers. The blue of her irises lost in the blackness of her pupils, full of a hunger as deep as his own. His flesh pulsed electric, nerve endings tingling with triumph. He could not help a sly smile from pulling at his lips. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. There was no denying it. He wanted to take advantage of it, be alive with her, push her back onto the table, and release his anger into her.

"Harry."

Her voice was soft and low, cautioning him, pulling him back from the edge of his anger fueled lust. He blinked. He took a deep breath and then another, the dark intensity of his emotions slowly dissipating.

"Who would I have left? Who would stand beside me?" The words rose up from the cavern of emptiness that he had carried with him since sitting in the church.

"I'm sorry Harry, I didn't mean to..." Her words trailed off and she leaned back against the table for support.

He took a step back and her eyes followed him, her face mirroring his own sense of suspended shock. This was nothing like the seductive pull he had felt in the kitchenette the previous day; this was a hunger far more raw and urgent. They stood as if they had narrowly avoided a crash, acutely aware that they had pushed up against a dangerous line. He moved his shoulders under the weight of his jacket, tilting his chin at the tightness of his collar. He had said too much, revealed his weakness. One by one, the shutters came down; emotions locked away, desires contained, his expression coming to rest in stern command.

"You should go home you've had a long day."

She silently bobbed her head in acquiescence, her former fire now doused. She pushed herself away from the table, giving him a wide berth as she walked toward the door. He spoke before she left.

"Ruth."

She turned back to him.

"Job well done."

"Thank you."

She stood in the doorway, unable to subdue the rise and fall of her chest, the after effects of the encounter still evident. Against his better judgement, he met her eyes. Even at a distance, the current they had created still ran between them, pulsing with a life of its own. For him, tomorrow evening could not come soon enough.


	8. Chapter 8

Near the centre of the briefing table there laid a faint mark, and like most scars, it went unnoticed by the casual observer but remained glaringly obvious to those who were present at its creation. Harry knew it was there. No amount of polish or time could completely erase it. It was from when he had thrown a chair across the table in a fit of rage at Ros over her duplicity with Yalta. It would always be there, just beneath the surface.

His elbow rested on the arm of his chair, his fingers absently rubbing his chin, giving the impression that he was listening intently to the voices of Lucas and Tariq, but his focus was on the scar. Over the years, he had believed his anger to have mellowed, thinking that his outburst at Ros was one last resurgence of a fading temper. Until last night. His eyes left the scratch and travelled to Ruth. She sat at the other end of the table, as far away from him as possible. She was leafing through a ream of paper, one hand poised above her work, a pen slowly rotating through her fingers. Slim and tapered, her fingers rubbed up and down along the shaft of the pen, mesmerising him with their movement. The pen ceased in mid motion and her eyes flashed up at him. He stared at her, unflinching, not caring that he had been caught out. Instead of her usual demure avoidance, she held his gaze, the air between them moving with silent thought. They both knew what lay just beneath the surface.

"I was able to pull passwords from the USB stick Ruth lifted." Tariq's voice filtered into Harry's consciousness.

At the mention of her name, Ruth brought her attention back to her papers. "There's a trail from Romaldi to Lindemann. A number of offshore accounts. Monies from which have been syphoned into various unstable regions."

"Any of our people?" Lucas asked.

"Besides the Lawrence charity, there were substantial donations to Bancroft's campaign through a number of third party aliases," said Ruth.

Harry rubbed his temple at the newly discovered malfeasance "I despise it when we have to clean our own house." He had to admit he wasn't remotely surprised by the information. At the very least, they could thwart Bancroft chance at office.

"We haven't gone through everything yet." Ruth tapped the pile of papers sitting in front of her.

"Who can we take this to?" Lucas asked.

"You mean how far do their fingers reach into our parliamentary pie?" Harry amended.

"The minute we tell anyone we'll lose any advantage we have in trawling their servers," Tariq warned.

"Then we wait until we have discovered everything. And we'll need incontrovertible proof against Bancroft."

"Do we put forth another candidate?" Ruth asked.

"We're not kingmakers, merely messengers. Let's make sure our message is heard loud a clear."

With those words, the team gathered up their papers and headed out the door, Ruth walking a few paces in front of Harry. They turned into the corridor and he said her name no louder than a whisper. She stopped, arms wrapped tightly around her torso, her file held close to her chest, as if shielding herself. He drew beside her, lowering his voice in confidence.

"I have a meeting with the DG. Can I pick you up at seven?"

He did not ask if she was still willing to accompany him to the Opera, he had taken her compliance for granted.

She nodded. "Do you remember where I live?"

"I remember everything." The heat, your fragrance, your lips. But he didn't say any of those words, he only smiled and walked away.

...

The cab crawled along at such an excruciatingly slow pace that Harry wondered if they were actually going backwards. He drummed his fingers on the seat, his earlier serenity now completely vanished. He had spent the last three hours defending his actions over Nightingale and biting his tongue at every turn to keep from exposing Bancroft. The meeting had run late - had he expected anything less – leaving him with the feeling that Dolby had known exactly what his plans were and was silently conspiring to keep him from having a private life. He looked down at his mobile wondering if he should call her while simultaneously contemplating who he could phone to get the traffic moving and out of his way. He had mistakenly assumed it would be faster to take a taxi to the theatre rather than suffer the pain of finding a parking spot with his own vehicle. It was all going wrong. He had wanted the night to be special, to pick her up at her house, drive through the darkened streets, and find their way back into the ease they enjoyed that night at the restaurant. His stomach churned. As each second passed, he could not help but think it was a sign that he and Ruth were not meant to be. It's only traffic; he consoled himself, not the end of the world.

The cab pulled up to the kerb and Harry paid off the driver, jumping out with alacrity he didn't know he possessed. The heat enveloped him, the humidity leaving droplets of moisture on his skin as he glanced at his watch. They could still make it in. He dove into the crowd, searching for her. She couldn't have entered the theatre without a ticket. But then again, this was Ruth and she did have an uncanny knack for accomplishing those sorts of tasks. He walked past the pillars, peering into the lobby, his hand absently fishing in his pocket for his mobile. He cursed himself for not being more specific about the exact location where they should meet. He cut through the crowd, moving against the current. He stopped for a moment to regroup his thoughts and caught his breath in relief. She stood, unaware of his presence, a diminutive silhouette against a giant advertisement, her brows furrowed, a worried expression on her face. For some reason, he wanted to savour the moment of her waiting for him, an ordinary woman on a night out free from the shackles of her past. She turned her head and recognised him, a warm smile lighting up her face. His heart fell into his stomach and his chest swelled, elated with the knowledge that he had finally been the one to bring a smile to her lips. She walked towards him and he drank her in, noting every detail of her appearance. He couldn't decide if her dress was black or blue, knowing only that held an iridescent sheen that fingers yearned to touch. The sleeves were short, her arms were bare, her feet in delicate silver sandals instead of boots. Parts of her previously unseen now uncovered, leaving him to imagine other parts unseen and waiting to be uncovered. A whole other Ruth just for him.

"I was worried something had happened," she greeted him. "I kept checking my phone but there was no red flash."

"You look lovely," he said.

She smiled modestly and looked towards the theatre. "Shouldn't we be going in?"

He wanted to take her by the hand, put his arm possessively around her shoulder, a decisive gesture that would claim her as his. Instead, he placed his hand on the small of her back, ushering her before him. He let his hand linger, feeling the smoothness of the fabric beneath his palm, and under that, the sinewy twist of muscle as she walked. Reluctantly, he removed his hand and produced their tickets for the usher. As quickly as he could, he returned his hand to its previous position on her back and dipped his head towards hers.

"We can get a drink at the interval."

They found their seats, settling in and catching their breaths. In perfect synchronicity, they both reached for their mobiles. He leant in close to her.

"You turn yours off, I'll set mine to vibrate," he whispered.

"Do you ever turn it off?"

"I don't think I dare."

"What about when-" She cut herself off, leaving the sentence unfinished.

"When what?" he asked, his head moving closer to hers as they spoke.

Her tongue flickered out over her lips, a gesture she did when she was thinking, he reminded himself, it meant nothing more than that, but he couldn't help his eyes from falling down to her mouth. She took a breath as if to say something and then decided against it.

"Nothing," she answered enigmatically, shaking her head as she sat back in her seat.

Harry put his phone back in his pocket wondering what she was alluding. He studied her profile as she watched the stage waiting for the curtain to rise. A thought dawning on him and his eyebrow crooked. No, her mind didn't work that way, did it? Rolling his tongue on the inside of his cheek, he placed his elbow on the armrest and leant back into her.

"If I can guess what you were going to say, do I get a reward?"

She continued to look at the stage, pretending to ignore him.

"Do I?" He lowered his voice suggestively.

She elbowed his arm gently, speaking with a feigned indignation. "Will you be monopolising the armrest for the entire evening?"

He ceded the armrest to her, his eyes lingering on her lips, daring to imagine what she had intimated but not letting his mind fully entertain all the pictures that went along with it. He smiled contentedly; for a moment they had flirted, teased, and come close to the edge of being a normal couple enjoying a night out. He need not have worried; the evening would work out splendidly after all.

At intermission, they joined the queue around the bar, Ruth offering to pay for the drinks as her way of saying thank you. Harry put his hand over hers and pushed it away from the small clutch that she carried. He ordered them each a glass of wine, once again eschewing his habitual drink, having lost track of how many days he had gone without a scotch. He was a new man, this was a new era. They walked away from the crowd, shoulders subtly brushing, finding an enclave, and debating whether they could find a place to sit. He dragged his eyes away from her and instinctively glanced about the room, sensing the need to be on his guard. He let out a small groan and turned into Ruth, hiding his face.

"What is it?" she asked.

"It's Clarence Bancroft. I'm hoping he doesn't see me."

She pressed closer to him as she kept her voice low. "Does he suspect we have anything on him?"

"I would think not."His hand rose to her waist, his mouth almost touching to her ear. A measure to protect their conversation - or so he told himself.

"We could hide," she said conspiratorially.

He smiled with grim resignation. It was their job to be invisible but they could never hide from their work.

"Harry!" a voice hailed him.

"Clarence," Harry greeted the man, quickly pulling his hand away from Ruth.

"Good to see Lawrence's Memorial didn't put a damper on your festive plans," the politician observed, a faint edge of contempt in his voice.

"I could say the same of you," Harry replied smoothly. The last thing he wanted to do was enter into a game of one-upmanship with this man.

"Actually, I'm here on business," said Bancroft.

"So are we." The words fell from his lips, his usual aplomb in these situations faltering. Ruth stiffened beside him.

Bancroft turned to Ruth. "I'm sorry we haven't met." He held out his hand. "Clarence Bancroft."

Ruth's eyes flew to Harry, a brief look of panic flickering in them. He understood. Should she use her real name or an alias? He wasn't sure what to do either, his instinct being to introduce her as someone else but she was his Analyst, she could very well meet Bancroft in another setting. They had nothing to hide.

"This is Ruth Evershed," Harry volunteered, omitting her title and the connection between them.

Bancroft took her hand holding onto it a little too long. He turned to Harry.

"Was the other one you were here with work too?"

Harry clenched his back molars, a scathing retort forming in his mind, but before it could make its way to his mouth, a bell chimed.

"Ah, the bells." Bancroft smiled with the certainty of a master marksman. "These pleasant interludes are always too short, aren't they? Time to get back and watch all the drama unfold." He gave Harry a knowing look. "Don't work too hard."

As Harry watched Bancroft's retreating back, a surge venomous rage coursed through his veins. He took a long draught of his wine and turned to Ruth. She was intently focused on her wine glass. He drained the last bit of his drink, waving the glass with his hand, doing his utmost to pretend that Bancroft's parting comment meant nothing.

"We'd better find a spot for these."

"Other one?" Ruth asked quietly, keeping her eyes lowered, her shoulders tense in anticipation of an explanation.

"Pay no attention to him. He was only trying to get my goat in retaliation for a comment I made yesterday."

"You can tell me."

What was he to tell her? That he was a man with needs, that he had found comfort with someone else. That he had blatantly disregarded that woman's feelings as he used her in an attempt to sate his appetite and forget the one who had sailed away. His fingers curled around the stem of his glass in frustration.

"You were gone almost three years, Ruth. You had a life. Was I not allowed to live too?"

"It was a half-life, Harry. I was never fully in it."

Her fingers moved up and down the stem of her glass reflectively, leaving Harry to wonder if she was fully in this life. She drained her glass, the muscles of her throat tightening as she swallowed.

"Is it right that we should be here, enjoying ourselves?" she asked quietly.

Damn Bancroft and his stupid interfering ways. The evening had been going so well. He took the glass from her, letting his fingers linger over hers, unable to think of what to say, hoping his touch would bring her back to him. She raised her gaze to him.

"Tosca dies at the end of this, doesn't she?"

"So does Mario," he pointed out.

"Because she couldn't save him."

Their eyes locked together, the pain of a shared remembrance wordlessly passing between them. He would not lose her to memory.

"But before that happens, they make quite a lot of beautiful music together."

His remark elicited a hint of a smile from her.

"Let's go find our seats." He set down their glasses and took her by the elbow, guiding her back to their section.

During the second act, a cloud of discontent formed around him. His thumb rubbed absently against his fingers as his mind churned, formulating the myriad of ways in which he could bring down Bancroft and the extreme pleasure he would feel in doing so. The opera held no allure for him, the music uninviting. In the darkness, between the notes, Ruth placed her hand on top of his, stilling the incessant movement of his fingers. She did not immediately take her hand away, but let it rest, her fingers drawing tiny circles on top of his hand, their soft ministrations slowly dissipating his anger towards Bancroft. She looked at him, her face barely discernible in the dimness of the theatre. Cautiously, he turned his hand over, feeling the heat of her palm against his as he threaded their fingers together, binding her to him. She gravitated closer, her head leaning on his shoulder, pressing against him as she inhaled deeply. The crown of her head rested near his chin and his lips brushed the halo of her hair. She squeezed his hand and he returned the pressure, everything forgotten, his world distilled down to the touch of her skin.

As the end of the act approached, the forlorn notes of a clarinet drifted through the air and Harry turned his focus towards the stage. It was the aria they had talked about in the restaurant, _E lucevan_ _le stella._ The one about the stars, he had called it. He smiled, remembering their dinner together and how she had quoted the lyrics. His eyes drifted to the surtitles, following the words of Mario's lament. _Fragrant she entered and fell into my arms._ He sat up in his chair, his attention now completely fixed on following the translation, looking for the exact words she quoted. They appeared and his mind whirled at their implications.

He remained engrossed in the spectacle until the very last chord, his skin tingling as the music swelled, the hair on the back of his neck rising with the final crescendo. Without missing a beat, the entire audience erupted in applause. They alone remained perfectly still, reluctant to relinquish their hold on each other. The house lights rose and she turned her head on his shoulder, tilting up to look at him, eyes glistening. On impulse, his hand lifted to wipe away a lone tear that had escaped but she straightened up in her seat, blinking at him as if suddenly realising their proximity. She made to take her hand back but he would not release it.

He led her through the crowd, silently carving a path, connected to her through thought and touch. The crush grew thicker as they neared the exit, his grip on her hand tightening, afraid that he might lose her in the bustle. There was a bottleneck at the doors. The air saturated with humidity, had transformed into a mist, delaying those who were dressed in their finest from stepping out onto the pavement. It did not stop Harry. He moved with a deliberate step, intent on spiriting her away, to his house or hers, it made no difference, he only wanted to be alone with her. They made it outside and he pulled her along, distancing them from the melee in front of the doors, looking for a prime spot to hail a taxi. He briefly glanced back and noticed that she was shivering. He pulled her around to the side of the building where they found shelter under the overhang, away from the swell of the crowd and the increasing force of the rain. His hand ran up her arm, her skin clammy under his fingers.

"You're cold," he observed.

"I'm fine."

"Here."

He took off his suit jacket and draped it over her shoulders, wrapping his fingers around the lapels and pulling them close in around her. She was incredibly small under the weight of the material. He didn't let go of the lapels but left his hands resting on her shoulders, fingers flexing on the fabric. Her eyes rose to his, stirring in him the hunger from the previous evening, and he was seized with the desire to possess her. His fingers curled tighter around the jacket and with a gentle tug, he pulled her in closer, bending his head toward her. At the last moment, she turned away, leaving his lips to graze her cheek.

"Harry," she whispered.

He closed his eyes, keeping his cheek pressed against hers. She shifted, bringing her head away from his.

"What are we?"

"Do we have to put a name on it?" he asked with quiet confusion in his voice. "Can we just let things happen and see where it takes us?"

She brought her hand out from underneath the jacket and placed it on top of his. "I thought I could but I'm not..." She closed her eyes a pained expression crossing her face. "I don't know if I can be what you want me to be."

"What do I want you to be?"

"We can't pick up where we left off. I'm not that woman anymore."

"I'm not asking for that."

She looked at him, doubting his words, her head tilted in apology. "I'm sorry, Harry. I can't."

She pulled away from him, slipping out of reach, his hand moving out to grab her, fingers clutching at the jacket.

"Ruth, wait. Let me take you home."

She evaded his grasp, stepping backwards along the pavement. No, no this was not happening. Surely, he could not have misread everything that had happened between them. A bubble of panic rose in his throat as his mind frantically searched for ways to keep her.

"At least let me find you a taxi," he implored.

She shook her head, turning away from him, her silver sandals tapping lightly on the glistening pavement as her figure quickly disappeared into the moving crowd. He stood in his shirtsleeves, awash in disbelief, unable to fathom the fact that she abandoned him, leaving him alone in the rain.


	9. Chapter 9

There wasn't enough scotch in the world to take the edge off his anger. He poured himself another tumbler full and banged the decanter down, the glass bottles clanking against each other. Let them break; let them all crack open just like him. He took a large swig of the scotch and stood, glaring the wall of his living room. There would always be a wall in front of him.

The air in the house was stale and close, the rain having done nothing to alleviate the humidity. He couldn't breathe. A fan sat near the bookcase, old and metal, breaking every safety code in the book. He turned it on in a vain attempt to dispel the heat. Tugging at the knot in his tie, he poured his frustration with the evening into the piece of silk, throwing it at a chair, missing and not caring. The collar of his shirt dug into his skin and he undid the top buttons, rubbing his hand around the back of his neck as he cursed himself. He had ruined it once again, pushing too far, too fast. He would lose her, the only person who truly understood him. If only he had held back and given her more time. The fan continued to drone on, ineffectual against the heat. He paced over the area rug, kicking at its upturned corner. Damn, this world of secrets, of broken relationships and fractured hearts, the inability for any of them to heal and find peace.

The doorbell rang. Who the hell could it be at this hour? What bloody catastrophe had befallen the world now? All he wanted to do was wallow in the sorry state of his life. The doorbell rang again. He couldn't hide - the lights were on. He banged his scotch down on a side table and stormed to the door, flinging it open.

Ruth stood on his doorstep, her eyes wide with surprise. He stared back at her, a surge of anger rising and then evaporating as his eyes ran over her. Her hair was wet, a damp strand plastered to her cheek, the bottom of her dress was soaked, the fabric clinging to her leg. They stood looking at each other, the rain whispering behind her. A car sloshed through a puddle, bringing her back to her purpose.

"You forgot your jacket," she said.

"How did you get here?" he asked, not entirely convinced she wasn't a figment of his imagination.

"Taxi." She followed his eyes as he peered over her shoulder. "I sent him away."

He remained motionless, unsure how to proceed. She held up his jacket, offering it to him.

"I hope I haven't ruined it."

He looked down at the garment in her hand; his mind slowly coming to accept the reality of her appearance, and perhaps the chance that there was more to her comment than concern for his jacket.

"I'm sure it can be salvaged."

He reached out and gently tugged on the coat, drawing her into the house along with it. As soon as she crossed the threshold, she released her hold, her fingers moving to nervously to play with the clasp on her purse. She looked around his entryway, casting her eyes everywhere but on him.

"You could have waited and brought it into work," he pointed out.

She nodded. He tilted his head at her daring to hope there was another reason why she had turned up on his doorstep.

"Why didn't you?" he pressed.

She glanced at the door as if deciding whether to leave, her body rocking towards it as her feet stayed firmly planted on the floor. She turned back to him, still not meeting his eyes, and inhaled a shaky breath.

"I didn't want to be alone," she whispered.

His chest constricted at her words. Was that the only reason she had turned up on his doorstep, a bid to outrun loneliness? He looked down at her as she turned the purse over in her hand. Who else did she have? Whose name did she call when the terrors of the night became too much? He wanted it to be his name, he wanted to be the one to protect her, he wanted that, and so much more but if all he could have was her presence here tonight then that was what he would take. A few nights ago, she had kept him company, not wanting him to be alone; he could do as much for her. He hung his coat on the hook and then reached out, stilling her fingers on her purse, slowly releasing it from her grasp, placing it on his hallway table.

"A drink then?"

He gestured toward the living room and she walked through, cautiously leading with her head. He looked around the room, seeing it with her eyes. The aged leather couch, cracked and worn, showing the signs of Scarlett's tenure in the house. His favourite chair, with its threadbare arm, a pile of books on the table beside it. The morning paper still scattered over the dining table, along with an empty cup that he had forgotten to wash. Browns and blacks, lines and angles, singularly devoid of colours and curves. The house of a bachelor. Her eyes travelled to his tie lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. He walked over and picked it up, tossing it on a chair.

"I have no sparkling water so you'll have to make do with my sparkling conversation."

The quip garnered a small smile from her and he crossed over to the table where the scotch sat. He poured her a drink and topped off his own. If he had broken his vow to forswear hard liquor, he would take her down with him.

"Please sit," he said, bringing the drink over to her.

She chose a seat on the couch, sliding along the leather to a spot in the corner, her fingers gingerly rubbing the smooth fabric. From force of habit, he gravitated to the chair where he normally sat but stopped himself in mid-motion, deciding to sit on the couch with her. He draped his arm over the back of the seat, keeping a calculated distance, far enough away so that she was still out of reach. Always out of reach. The leather creaked as she sat back and looked around the room.

"Your house is far cooler than mine," she said.

"It's much hotter upstairs."

The rim of his glass froze at his lips. It was only an observation but in the languid air of the living room, it sounded more like an invitation. On the other side of the room, the fan hummed, moving back and forth, as it watched their conversation, waiting for one of them to fill the loaded silence that his comment had created.

"I'm sure the heat will break soon," she murmured into her glass, avoiding his eyes.

"I'm sure it will." He took a large swallow of scotch and looked down at his glass, concentrating on it rather than on her.

Her fingers played with the hem of her dress, finding an irregular dark spot and stopping to trace over the pattern. He followed her motions, mesmerised by the path her fingers were taking. Ever so subtly, she shook the hem of her dress, catching the air from the fan in an effort to dry it. Willing himself not to imagine what lay beneath the fabric, he ran his hand over the back of his neck, slipping two fingers under his collar , lifting it to catch the faint breeze. Closing his eyes, he drew a steadying breath, invoking a silent promise to himself. He would not make a move, nothing would happen tonight, he would merely sit and listen.

She crossed her legs, droplets of rain dripping from the sole of her sandal. "I'm sorry, my shoes are wet. I should have taken them off before I came in. Do you mind?"

"Of course." His voice was tight and he cleared his throat, dropping his tone a register. "Not at all."

Her fingers slid along her foot, unclasping tiny buckles, revealing shell painted toenails and the merest glimpse of a pale arch. This could prove harder than he anticipated.

"It was a wonderful production this evening." She slipped her feet from her sandals. "It was very well done."

For a moment, he contemplated steering the conversation in a different direction, but she had left him an opening, and that, along with the heat and the whiskey and her bare feet with their delicately painted toenails, created a heady concoction, pushing caution to the back of his mind.

"I was able to translate what you said to me at the restaurant when you quoted the lyrics in Italian."

Tilting her head, she absently played with a tendril of hair at the nape of her neck. "Were you?"

Finding a damp strand, she pulled it straight and continued to run her fingers through the rest of her hair, momentarily distracting from his original thought. His fingers curled around his glass, imagining the touch of her hair. He drained his drink and set it on the table.

"I was listening for it tonight, watching the surtitles."

"Ah," she nodded, taking a sip of her scotch as she looked away. "And what do they mean?"

A ridge of leather piping ran along the back of the couch and he played with it, studying his fingers as they moved over the seam, debating whether he should go forward, knowing that once said his words could not be taken back. The temptation was too great. Keeping his eyes on his fingers, he spoke.

"Soft kisses and gentle caresses."

There was a sharp hitch to her breath and he watched fascinated as the rise and fall of her chest became more pronounced. He had done with words what he could not do with his hands. The promise he had made to himself was slipping away. It was late, she was in his house, on his couch, one small move, and he could touch her.

"Why did you quote that to me?"

She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out. He was prepared to wait, sitting with her on the sofa the entire night if need be. She placed her drink on the table and spoke without looking at him.

"I don't know why I said it. It's just a lovely phrase that I remembered. That's all they are now, just a memory, soft kisses and gentle caresses."

His heart sank. It was not the answer he had expected. He steeled himself, thinking that her next words would be about her life in Cyprus.

"But we're not allowed to be soft, are we?" She drew a deep breath. "I miss that part of myself."

It took all his self-control not to pull her into his arms and tell her how much he had missed her. Instead, he let his fingers ease along the back of the sofa, close enough to feel the heat from her shoulder. She was wrong, she was still soft. Of course, at other times she was stubbornly hard and unyielding, full of confusing contradictions that no file could ever explain. He flexed his fingers, achingly close to her shoulder, yearning for contact but deciding better and folding them back into his palm. So many of the fractures in her life were because of him. There must be some way he could help her, comfort her.

"What can I do?" he asked.

Her eyes found his, haunted with the sadness she had shown him in the restaurant, lost, looking for direction.

"Hold me."

His chest split open, her words cutting into it, piercing the softest part of him that had lain forgotten and unused for such an achingly long time. The muscles in his arm twitched with instinct and he quelled the impulse to grab her, his lungs heavy with the effort to breathe. He wanted to touch her, feel the skin that lay under her dress, press his lips against it. He couldn't, it wouldn't be right, she was vulnerable, and he was close to the edge. The slightest breath and he would be over.

"If I held you," he whispered, "I wouldn't be able to let you go."

He looked at her hoping she could read the meaning between his words, any further explanation escaping him, unable to articulate what he wanted, what he needed from her. They were beyond colleagues, beyond friendship. Unable to face him, she kept her eyes lowered to her lap, twisting her fingers as she spoke.

"I don't know how much I can give you."

Powerless to stop himself, his fingers moved to touch the curve of her shoulder, heartbeat accelerating as he felt the hardness of bone beneath the smooth satin.

"Tonight?"

Her head tilted a fraction, her cheek not quite touching his hand on her shoulder. His fingers moved back, coming forward again to slide underneath the cap of her sleeve. Cautiously, he inched closer.

"Tomorrow?"

She gave an involuntary shiver as his fingers drew circles on the delicate skin of her arm. Her eyes remained closed a war of thought playing over her face. He dipped his head to her ear.

"More?"

He stopped his movements, waiting for her to step into the moment with him. The air was thick with anticipation, her breathing all but stopped as she sat completely still. Sliding his arm over the back of the couch, he raised his free hand to her face, tracing along her jaw and turning her towards him. He caressed her cheek, his thumb coming to rest on her bottom lip, finding the spot she had shown him in the restaurant. Her lips parted and her breath flowed warm over his hand, the tension easing from her body, her eyes remaining closed to him. He trailed his fingers down her throat, to the notch of her clavicle, following the dip of her neckline, glancing over the swell of her breasts to the line between them, every touch taking him further away from his resolve. The cadence of her breathing quickened, her breasts straining against the bodice of her dress, yearning for the touch of his palm. Blood pumped through his veins in primal response, skin taut and nerves tingling, his breath shallow. His voice lowered huskily as he teetered on the edge of control.

"I need more, Ruth."

She looked up him; all the previous sadness had vanished, replaced by a look of unadulterated longing. In the end, it didn't matter what she gave him, he was caught in her web of push and pull. He wound his fingers into her hair, as he had imagined that day on the embankment and brought her head closer to his. She swayed into him, her lips brushing against his, soft and fleeting. He held back. Sensing his reticence, she opened her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said, laying her hand against his chest in a gesture of apology. "If you don't want to..." She stared at his throat; her fingers moving up to absently run along his collar.

"I want to." He reeled her back in. "I want to very much."

His fingers clutched her hair, bending her head back as he pulled her towards him, finally surrendering to his endless fascination with her lips. Soft kisses and gentle caresses, he silently intoned, delicately tasting her, using all of his restraint to fight the urgency that was building inside of him. He moved over her mouth asking, searching, granting her the smallest spaces for breath as he inhaled her scent. Her hand fell to his thigh, fingers drawing across the muscle of his leg. His concentration faltered as his focus narrowed to the spot where her hand lay, his muscles twitching, straining with arousal, aching for her touch. So tantalisingly close that the thought of sinking into her overwhelmed him, breaking through the barriers of his control. He crushed her body against his, demanding more. She twisted into him, mouth open with want, her tongue flicking against his lips. He eagerly responded, thrusting his tongue into her, hot and probing, leaving no space for breath. The smooth satin of her dress beckoned him and he ran his hand over it, around to her back, gliding up the ridge of the zipper, his finger dallying with the catch at the top. Each breath becoming more erratic, harder to control. It would all end too soon; she would pull away as she had done before leaving him with only the memory of this kiss. To his amazement, she didn't pull away but pressed harder against him. Emboldened, he slid his hand down to her hip, skimming over her thigh as he gathered the folds of fabric between his fingers, delving under the damp hem, feeling the softest of skin.

Too fast, too fast.

"Tell me to stop and I will," he murmured against her lips, his hands still moving.

"Why would I tell you to stop?" she asked between kisses.

"There should be more dinners..." His lips grazed across her cheek, "and conversations..."

Her hand rose to touch his face and he started at the feel of her fingers, inching away to look at her.

"What we would we learn?" she whispered, her thumb coming to rest on his bottom lip, the spot where she had indicated his tell. "No one else can ever know us the way we know each other."

His fingers dug into her sides as he recognised the truth of her words. She did not know all of his secrets, would never know the darkest corner but she had plumbed his depths far deeper than anyone else had. Waiting was for the young, for those who had time not for those who walked beside death.

Mouth hot on hers, he pushed her back against the leather of the couch, the only sound their panting breaths and the hum of the fan. The weight of his body pressed her deeper into the cushions as he moved on top of her, bumping, repositioning, sliding between her legs. Her thigh pressed against his hip as she crooked her leg to accommodate him, the material of her dress slipping down, exposing an expanse of creamy skin. His hand gravitated to it, sinking into her flesh, his fingers searching, circling, dipping under a scrap of lace. She gave a sharp inhale of surprise and he took his hand away, stunned by his own audacity. He moved his attention to her throat, over her chest, suffused in a wonderful flush. His hand brushed along the smoothness of her dress, skimming her ribs, molding her breast, his tongue finding the valley between them, pulling at the neckline, still needing more. She arched into him and a sudden rush of noise overwhelmed his senses, all thought halted as the blood moved to his groin, pulsing against her thigh. If she did not pull away, he would have her here on the couch, sliding along the leather.

Too far, too far.

"How far can we take this?" he asked, breathless.

She looked towards the door, and he eased onto his elbows, expecting that the night would be over. She turned back to look at him as she spoke.

"How hot is your upstairs?"

It took a moment for her words to sink in. Grabbing her by the hand, he pulled her from the couch, dragging her behind him as he moved to the stairs, walking with the same singularity of purpose that he had possessed at the theatre.

The sultry heat of his bedroom enveloped them like a veil and he hurriedly crossed to the window. The casement, long closed and swollen with moisture, creaked as he raised it. A breeze stole in, gently stirring the gauze of the curtains. He turned back to her.

"It will be cooler if we leave the lights off."

She stood by his dresser, her features blurred in the darkness, no more than a silhouette. Let this not be a dream. As he approached, he saw her fingers running along the edge of a glass tray stopping to examine a small leather box. He held up his wrist, revealing the silver band of his watch. She hesitated before bringing her hand up to the metal links, her fingers brushing his pulse as she carefully unlocked the clasp. She slowly drew the watch from around his wrist and let it drop into the tray. He reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out his mobile.

"See, I do turn it off."

She tilted her head in question. He shrugged.

"Let the world burn around us."

He held it out to her and she laid it on the tray alongside his watch. She moved to step away from the dresser but he reached out and captured her arm, winding her around so that her back was flush against him. Bending his head to the slope of her shoulder, he seared his mouth into the curve of her neck, his hands rising over her ribs to cup her breasts. His lips found a tender spot behind her ear, his palms circling the tautness of her nipples through the material. She leaned back and he pushed into her, growing hard as he felt the swell of her backside against him. She whispered his name in a soft plea, her hands rising to cover his and she tried to move them away, the intensity of the embrace overwhelming her.

He let her go but only by half. Keeping her partly against him, he left enough room for his hand to run up her back. He found the metal clasp of her zipper and slowly drew it down the length of her back. The act held a certain intimacy to it, far more potent than the physical, that he was somehow removing her shell and by doing so, revealing a part of himself. Running his fingers over her exposed skin, he found the clasp of her bra, fingers clumsy with desire unable to release it with one hand. He gave up, content to trail his fingers down her spine, causing her to curve away from him as she shivered beneath his touch. His thumb worked over the muscle at her shoulder, his hand spread wide over the crest of her shoulder blade. This creature, so small that had loomed so large in his life. He stood transfixed, not believing that he had been allowed to go so far, her hair tickling his nostrils as he breathed her in, reminding him of the reality of the situation. He took a step back coming up against the edge of the bed. He sat down, the implication of their actions hitting him with their full weight. He held her hand looking up at her as she stood before him, swaying, knees brushing his, the shoulder of her dress falling in seductive dishabille.

"Ruth?" His was voice hoarse.

"Mmm?" She bent towards him, her fingers tenderly running over his face.

"We can't go back from this."

Her fingers stopped, and she brought her face close to his, eyes black in the darkness. "There's nothing to go back to."

He pulled her down onto his lap, burying his face in her breasts, praying to any god that would listen that she was doing this out of want for him and not to forget another man. His hands ran up her back, spreading the dress apart, hands skillfully relieving her of her bra. He cupped her breast, the flesh filling his palm, closing his eyes at the feel of her. With one arm around him for balance, she pressed her hand on his chest, his heart hammering beneath her palm as her cheek rested against his. She placed gentle, feather-like kisses along his jaw and nimbly found the buttons of his shirt, releasing them one by one, fingers far more dexterous than his. Her hand roamed over his chest, finding the memory of muscle beneath the flesh. Had she imagined him as he had thought of her? Had she spent sleepless nights, wondering, aching?

"Has anyone ever told you that you have a magnificent chest?" she whispered against his ear.

"No."

"Well, I'm telling you."

He gave a small groan at her words. More, he needed more. Every piece of her. Mind, heart, body. He twisted her around, pushing her onto the bed, splayed across the sheets in a tangled mess of half shed clothes and overreaching limbs. His mouth sought her breast, lips sucking hardened peaks, tongue teasing, savouring each one in turn. Hands fumbling with need, he divested her of her dress, unravelling the satin from her body, the fabric sliding through his fingers. When he reached the lace he had discovered earlier, he paused and his fingers curled around the elastic. The skin of her shoulder burned against his mouth, and he closed his eyes, coherent thought vanishing.

There was no going back.

Slowly, he slid his hand under the lace, his fingers spreading her heat, wet with desire, slipping into her. The supple bow of her body grew taut as she moaned and pushed into his hand, hips undulating against him. She gripped his shoulders, clutching at his shirt. Her fingers once nimble, fumbled with his belt, tugging at it and then abandoning it with frustration, settling instead on stroking him through his trousers. He groaned against her skin, tearing the scrap lace from her legs. Untangling herself from him, she rose to her knees, and he held his breath, wanting to stop and worship what knelt before him but her fingers were insistent, tugging at him. His shell was harder to remove, buckles, and buttons, an arm caught in a shirtsleeve, a foot in the cuff of his trouser. As she pulled at his clothes, he pushed against her, mouth and hands impatient for sustenance causing her to teeter half off the bed. He caught her, dragging her back from the edge, pulling her into him.

"You okay?"

"Yes," she said, catching her breath.

His hand gripped her arm tightly, hoping that he always be there to pull her back from the edge.

Arms wrapped around her, his heart frantically beat against hers, from lust and adrenaline and a host of emotions too complicated for him to define. He wanted to tell her that he loved her but the word felt inadequate, trite, to shallow a vessel to contain the overflow of feelings he had for her. His mouth was against her ear, words uttered without thought.

"You must know how I feel about you." It was all he could manage. She nodded. "Say you feel the same about me."

"They're just words, Harry," she whispered. "We're more than that."

He pressed his face into her neck, his mouth greedy on her throat; overwhelmed by a hunger so deep it carved down to the base of his spine, a void of longing that only she could fill. His lips moved over her skin, retracing the path over her breasts, sliding his tongue along the delicate depression between her ribs, the muscles of her stomach fluttering in anticipation. Resting at the crook of her hip, the velvet of her thigh against his cheek, he drew his fingers over her, dipping in and out, discovering her secrets, his tongue coaxing pants of pleasure from her. She writhed beneath his mouth and he held her hips, content to fill her desires until his need overwhelmed him. Drunk on the scent of her, he dragged himself up her body, sliding against her skin, lingering to taste the trickle of salt between her breasts. He hovered over her, hard and hungry, teasing her with the tip of his erection. He would make her wait, make her want him as much as he wanted her. Her fingers dug into his hips and she whispered his name, and that was all it took, he was lost, all his will power vanishing in an instant. He could deny her nothing. She opened before him, and he sank into her, her softness stretching around him as he filled her. This was a dream; no reality could ever match this.

They moved together in a languorous thrall, waves of pleasure rippling through them, each intent on savouring the experience. Her breath fanned against his cheek, soft pants turning into ragged gasps, wanting more but resisting as they tried to hold off the edge. He tilted her hips, sinking deeper, her legs wrapping around him as they bucked against each other with ever-increasing desperation. Coarse hair against satin skin, lithe limbs against muscle, their bodies matching the heat of the room, melting into each other, fusing as he plunged into her. Wave after wave, he rolled into her, intent on driving out the memory of any other man, each thrust coming harder and harder, seeking out her deepest core, the one secret she kept hidden from him. Her nails dug into his skin, her body rising to meet his, straining to match his intensity. Time wound in on itself and her breath all but ceased, muscles taut, quivering with delicious tension, held in fragile suspension as he drove into her. She broke around him, the last piece of her shattering in an exquisite moan. She fell away from him but he would not let her go. His hand sought hers, fingers winding, clutching, grasping, holding onto the moment for as long as he could, fearing to give himself over but wanting to join her in release. All control lost, his body taking over, one thrust, two, crashing against her, drowning, he shuddered, clinging to her as if she were the only thing left in the world, and with one last thrust, he came, collapsing on the sanctuary of her shore.

Robbed of all his strength, he lay on her, the erratic tattoo of his heart beating in answer to hers, lips pressed against her shoulder as her fingers stroked his hair. He eased off her, lying on his stomach, his hand possessively on her breast.

There were no words for this.

His breathing slowed, his heart calmed, and the sweet call of oblivion beckoned him. He closed his eyes. Finally, peace.


	10. Chapter 10

Thick clouds of smoke whirled around him, their colour changing from white to grey as ash filled the air. Dust obscured his vision and his lungs burned as he strained for oxygen. A high-pitched whine invaded his ears and his shook his head in an effort to dislodge the sound. She was there amongst the smoke and debris; he could find her, if only he had move time. Layers of smoke halted him in his tracks. He could go no further. Mercifully, the ringing subsided, replaced by an unnatural silence. He opened his mouth to call for help but his voice was dry in his throat. The silence deepened, the only sound his pounding heart, knocking inside his chest, and he froze, overcome by the fear that there was no one to hear him. He was completely alone. The smoke churned around him, turning into a stygian blackness, wisps becoming sooty fingers, reaching out to touch his shoulder.

Harry gasped and his eyes flew open, his chest heaved as he sucked cleansing air into his lungs. Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the room and he lay staring up at the ceiling, pulling the scattered pieces of his mind back from the nightmare and into the present. It was the same dream, every night; he should be used to it by now. He shivered. One day that black hand would touch him and not let him go.

Patterns of light danced on the plaster above his head, fading and reappearing as a soft breeze stirred the sheer material of his bedroom curtains. The air was different, fresher, cooler, a hint of autumn laced with a reassuringly familiar scent. He slowly turned his head. On the pillow next to him was a fan of dark hair and beneath that, a small shoulder peeking out from under the sheets. His heart warmed. For the first time in his life, he had awoken from a nightmare and into a dream. It all fell into place. Every loss, every trauma, every setback had been a necessary prelude in order that one day he could wake up with her.

Turning on his side, he marvelled at how still she lay, the sheets barely moving with her breath. He longed to touch her, run his hands along the shape of her, as he had done the previous night. Prove to himself that she was alive and real, to once and for all dispel with the shadows. It seemed a shame to wake her. He craned his head and looked at the bedside clock. It was coming up on eight. For a brief second, he contemplated checking his mobile and just as quickly dismissed the idea. With the utmost care, he lifted the sheet away from her shoulder, the better to see the contours of her back. Faint lines crisscrossed over a large swath of tawny coloured skin; the straps of a bathing suit he mused. Was that all that remained of her former life? Tan lines and memories. Would those memories also fade like the markings of the sun? Unable to help himself, he ran his fingers along the lines, watching the muscles of her back twitch as she stirred faintly. He traced the curve along to the base of her spine, finding the sensitive spot that made her arch away from him the night before. She wriggled away and burrowed her head deeper into her pillow, trying to reclaim sleep. Undeterred, he slid his arm around her and pulled her back against him. With a small sigh of surrender, she nestled into him and he held her, giving himself over to the reverence of the moment. The warmth of her skin sinking into his chest, vertebrae against chest bone, freshly awoken life, precious and his. He curled around her, protectively, possessively, and lost himself in the scent of her hair. As they lay together, his fingers lazily skimmed over her arm, the slender bone of her clavicle, roaming over the swell of her breast, committing the feel of her to memory. While his mind dozed, his body grew restless, stirring beside her. He drew his hand down along her stomach, fingers splayed out, pressing her hips against him, unfolding her, searching for the sweet spot he had found last night.

She gasped. He smiled.

She rippled against him, his lips tasting the back of her neck, his fingers dipping in and out, as their bodies flowed together. Her breath was hot on his arm, his chest rising with hers, heartbeats finding each other, as her body molded into him with seductive invitation. She hooked her leg around his calf and after a few graceless attempts, he sank himself into her. Muscles twisting in a sinuous dance, she arched away, shoulder blades collapsing like wings as she pushed against him. His fingers sank into the supple flesh of her hip, grinding against her, moving with growing urgency, muscles straining for leverage. She rolled onto her stomach and he followed her, his weight pressing down on her, thrusting deeper. He groaned with pleasure, she always knew best. Closing his eyes, he abandoned himself to the moment, her soft moans lacing the periphery of his consciousness. Darkness and fears forgotten, his only thoughts were of her, hot and wet and perfect. He would sell his newly found soul to wake up every morning like this. He collapsed on top of her, emitting a satisfied growl.

Not wanting to break the connection, he rested, lying half on her, his lids fluttering shut contentedly as the sun's rays reached across the bed. She stirred beneath him and he kissed her ear.

"I'm sorry, did I wake you?" he asked, not so innocently.

A low chuckle vibrated through her body, echoing in his chest. Twisting her body, she turned under him and he caught his breath at the sight of her, the effects of the muted morning light and sleep, wrapping her in a veil of youth. He could only hope the light was as kind to him. He looked at her, searching for words, having no idea what to say. Unable to hold his gaze, her eyes flitted about his chest, and she modestly pulled the sheet up over her breasts. With tentative fingers, she touched his shoulder, opening her mouth as if to speak but promptly closed it again, running her finger along the raised white ridge that was Tom' parting gift. His palm rested on her chest, fingers curling against the sheet; her scars were not so visible. He loathed to break the moment, they were so much better without words. He had never been very good with the dewy emotion of the morning after, usually avoiding it by citing a national crisis. But he wanted to stay with her. Propping himself up one an elbow, he eased the sheet down, tracing the translucent skin over her breastbone, following a faint tributary of blue veins.

"Did you sleep well?" he asked.

"I think I did, which is a rarity." She subtly edged the sheet up once more. "Did you?"

He nodded. He would not tell her about the dream. His finger hooked over the top of the sheet, gently tugging from her fingers and sliding it down, exposing a dusky nipple, which he delicately traced. His fingers stilled on their round of endless circles. "Ruth?" This time, he was the one who could not meet her eyes. "We didn't use any..."

Her lips curled in a wry smile. "I wouldn't have gotten this far in life without taking a few precautions." The smile fell from her face and her eyes clouded over, colouring a shade of deep grey. She distractedly found a strand of hair and twisted it around her finger, her gaze moving away from his shoulder, out into the room. "Your bedroom is white."

"The painters told me it was buttermilk."

"Ah, well, that's much more appetising."

"Is there something wrong with it?"

"No, no." She shifted under him. "It's not what I imagined."

He raised a brow. "You imagined my bedroom?"

A smile tugged at her lips, her eyes avoiding his. "I may have. Once or twice, on occasion."

The idea that she had thought about his bedroom made him immensely happy. The fact that she now lay naked beneath his roaming hands in said room made him even happier.

Turning back to him, she ran her fingers over the fine stubble that peppered his jaw, dipping her thumb into the pad of his chin. In all his carnal forgettings, no one had ever touched his face the way she did. He usually balked at that sort of contact, years of training having conditioned him to associate a hand near the throat with death. She had been the last one to touch his face, that day on the dock. She would be the only one. His fingers reflexively dug into her side. Thoughts like that would be his downfall. In affairs of the heart, there was the beloved and the one who loved, a perfect imbalance of affection. In all of his amorous entanglements, he had always held the power, kept a part of himself hidden, the one to walk away. He had not treated many women kindly and his misdeeds were bound to catch up to him one day but in his wildest imaginings, he had never envisioned it would be the woman who looked at him now.

"What are you thinking?" she asked.

"What are you thinking?" he countered, evading the question.

She licked her lips and inhaled deeply. "What do we do now?"

"Breakfast?"

He dipped his head down to her breast, taking a nipple in his mouth. eliciting from her gentle moan. She indulged him, letting him have his way, her fingers winding into his hair, giving out a faint sigh.

"Harry." He wasn't paying attention, preoccupied with his exploration of her dusky areoles. "Harry." Her voice softly chided him, getting his attention. He lifted his head and looked up at her. "I meant where do we go from here?"

He studied her. Such a creature of the finite while he lived in a world of endless variables. "We just got here, can't we enjoy it for a while."

"There's this pesky little thing called the outside world."

"It fell apart without us, remember?" He moved himself up her body, pressing his lips in the hollow of her throat.

"Ah, yes, that's right."

With his mouth on hers, he lay across her body, intent on preempting any more analytical thought. He knew how he would like to silence her, if only he were in better shape. He would not entertain the idea that age had anything to do with it.

"Harry?"

He groaned. "I am not answering any more questions. I do not yield the floor, the member from the other side of the bed has not been recognised, the debate is over." He continued to kiss her.

"I'd like to make a motion."

He raised his head and looked at her in exasperation. "What?"

"That once awoken all members of the house must be summarily fed."

He looked around the room then back at her. "Is there anyone to second that?"

"Aren't you hungry?"

"I am completely and utterly satisfied. But if pressed I could have another course."

"Harry."

He raked his teeth over the soft flesh of her breasts.

"Harry."

Refusing to listen, he pulled the sheet over his head and nibbled his way down her body. With a sigh of resignation, she gave herself over to him.

...

The stream from the shower pounded his back and he whistled a tuneless air. The hot water scalded his skin, and he soaped everything twice over, a habit he had unconsciously developed. Even now in the back of his mind, behind the images of lithe limbs and tawny skin, he felt the urge to be clean. He turned off the taps and stepped out, wrapping himself in a towel. The room swirled with steam, fogging up the mirror, and for a moment he was taken back to the day of the bombing. After hearing the final confirmation that Ros was dead, he had scrubbed himself ruthlessly, wanting to eradicate the smell of smoke, remove the stain of her death from his hands. He slumped, leaning against the vanity for support. Shit. He found a hand towel and hurriedly wiped the mirror clean, his ruddy reflection gazing back at him. He stared at it long enough to assure himself that he was alive. Stare at it too long and he would start to a question why fate had allowed him to live.

He padded back to his bedroom half hoping that he would find her still in his bed. Instead, he found the floor tidied of their strewn clothes and the coverlet neatly in place. He felt the urge to mess it up again, to prove that they had been there together. He rummaged through his wardrobe, looking for something suitable to wear, silently thanking Catherine for her various obligatory holiday presents. He crossed to his dresser and picked up his watch from the tray where she had laid it, the metal links grounding him in time. His mobile, on the other hand, carried a different weight, pulling at him, dragging him down. Obligation, duty, responsibility. He turned it on, a chill running through him as he remembered the time he had let everything go to voice mail, and Francis Debham had ended his life in a haze of car exhaust. He looked at himself in the mirror. How many deaths lay at his feet? He was tired of it. Let someone else stop the gap. He wanted out. He wanted to wake up in the morning with her, to worry that he did not have a proper suit to wear instead of scrounging for scraps of casual clothes, to take a shower and feel clean. He rubbed his forehead, fingers threading through his thinning hair. It needed to be cut, but he didn't care.

The curtains billowed, catching his eye and walked over the window. A cool breeze blew in, the heat having finally abated and he let it wash over him, debating whether to toss the phone out to the pavement below. He closed the casement, abruptly halting the dance of the curtains. As he fastened the latch, he felt a sharp sting in the bottom of his foot. He bent down and found a lone cufflink, embedded in the fibre of the carpet. How long had that been there? He returned to the dresser, flipping open the lid of the leather watch box that sat on the tray, depositing the cufflink inside to lay with the other paraphernalia. His fingers brushed over the mementos, stopping when they came to a smooth gold band. He had not looked at it in years. What sentiment had driven him to keep it? Perhaps he had not completely given up on the idea of marriage. He held it up to the light, examining it, cold metal nothing more. He closed his hands around it, feeling the imprint of the circle in his palm. The image of Ruth in the kitchenette flickered before him, how he had slipped a ring on her finger. He had dared in that moment to entertain the possibility; would he ever dare again? Rings meant nothing. They were more than that. He put the ring back, closing the box resolutely.

He finished dressing and bounded down the stairs, possessed of an energy he had not felt in years.

He stopped short when he saw her standing in his kitchen. Secretly, he had harboured the fantasy that she would be standing in one of his shirts, the length of her leg on view below it but she stood fully clothed in her dress from the night before. Barefoot, mussed hair, a cup of tea in one hand, a piece of toast in the other, her face looking for all the world like a little girl with her hand in the cookie jar.

"Hope you don't mind," she said through a mouthful of toast. "I haven't eaten since yesterday morning."

He sauntered towards her with measured steps, confident she could not flee from the confines of his kitchen. "Why not?"

"Nerves, I suppose."

The thought that she had been nervous about their date was balm to his battered ego. He motioned to the toast.

"There's a price to be paid for everything."

"If you're going to deduct it from my salary, you won't get much."

"You should tell your boss your worth more."

Standing in front of her, he placed a hand on either side, trapping her against the counter. A fleeting look of panic crossed her face and he released one hand, allowing her a breath of space.

"Are you alright?"

"My hands are full," she explained, deflecting his question.

She set down her mug along with the remnants of the toast and turned back to him. He looked at her curiously, not quite convinced of her explanation. She licked a few crumbs from her fingertips and smiled, her demeanor relaxing as she laid a hand on his shirt, just above his heart.

"This is nice." Her fingers brushed across the fabric. "Chambray."

"I thought it was denim."

"It is but not quite."

His hand came up to rest on her hip. "This is my favourite dress."

"How do you know? You haven't seen all my dresses."

"I'd like to see all your dresses."

She slid her hand over his shoulder, fingers moving to caress the back of his neck, finding the beginnings of a curl and lightly toying with it. A frisson of longing snaked down his spine. See, there was an excellent reason not to cut his hair. He let his finger wander up to the scoop of her neckline, following the path they had taken the previous evening.

"I'd like to see you out of all your dresses too."

She lowered her eyes demurely and smiled, cheeks flushing pink. The fact that his words could still embarrass her after all they had done together made him cherish her even more. Words of endearment floated around in his head, not quite making the journey to his tongue, the last brick of self-preservation holding him back. He kissed her temple instead.

"You can take a shower here if you like."

"I'd rather go to mine. Change of clothes, toothbrush and all that."

He moved his lips down to her mouth. "You taste fine to me, of toast and tea."

"You smell all fresh and clean," she murmured against his cheek.

He wasn't clean. He knew that. He stepped away from her.

"Is that all you're having? Toast?"

"I didn't want to impose."

"I have bacon and eggs." He opened the fridge taking out the food to illustrate his point.

"Shall I make it?"

"No, no. I can cook for myself you know." He fished a frying pan from the cupboard and set in on the stove. "In fact, I will cook for you."

"You don't have to bother-"

"I want to." He paused in his preparations, his eyes finding hers. "I want to look after you."

Her mouth opened as if to dispute the idea that she needed to be taken care of, but she quickly closed it, tilting her head as she concluded that a little care would not mean the abdication of her self-reliance. She leaned against the counter, motioning for him to continue.

"Do you eat this every morning?"

He gave out a huff. "I barely have time for a coffee. That's why I treat myself on the weekend." He separated the strips of bacon and laid them neatly in the pan. "Maybe a bit of sausage, bread, the full fry up."

"Is that what you do? Deny your appetite and then devour everything in one sitting?"

His stopped, an egg in one hand, poised at the edge of the frying pan. One piece of information and she had found a crack, her fingers peeling away his entire shell. Is that what he had done? Denied himself the pleasure of her for so long that in his delight he would burn through it in a day. He did not look at her but continued with his motions, splitting the egg on the lip of the frying pan.

"How do you like your eggs?"

"I haven't had bacon and eggs since-"

She took a deep breath and he held his in anticipation, worried that he had once again inadvertently opened the door to a memory of Cyprus. To his relief, she gave a small smile.

"Since I went away."

The smile on her face grew and he dared to hope that she had come back to him. The corners of his mouth lifted in response, the muscles of his smile lax from lack of use. Words fell away, unnecessary as they stood in his kitchen, the crackle of bacon sizzling in the background. Raising his hand to her face, he gently rubbed his knuckle along the plane of her cheekbone. Her eyes were a blue he had never seen before and he wondered if any other man had seen that particular hue. He wanted that day to last forever, to have an eternity of days with her. He would do everything he could to keep her by his side.


	11. Chapter 11

In all of his imaginings of her, the one thing he had never done was conjure up her new home. They were always in his house, in his bed, doing what he wanted to do. She was an extension of him; his officer, his analyst, his girl. As if to underscore his thoughts, Harry placed his hand possessively on her lower back guiding her as they strolled up the path to her flat. Perhaps he had never thought of this new place because it housed a new Ruth. He preferred to remember her old place. A kitchen in the dead of night, an amber glow, a glass of scotch and a particularly unwelcome visitor. A visit in the early morning, the room filled with a watery half-light, sweet tea, and consternation. He had often thought of that day, of the myriad of choices that had unfolded before him, the decisions that he had made. If only he had stayed with her in that kitchen, how events would have played out differently.

So lost was he in thought, he stumbled into her, clipping her heels when she paused before her entrance to rummage for her keys. After a murmured apology, she fumbled with her clutch, withdrawing her keys, her hand hesitating on the lock.

"I haven't been here long." The key slipped on the lock, teeth rasping against metal as he fingers fumbled. "It's all very new."

He placed a reassuring hand on top of hers, steadying the key, helping her to turn it in the latch. "Yes, it is."

Her eyes remained on his hand. "I'm still getting used to it."

He bent close to her ear, sensing she was talking about more than the flat. "Give it some time." He pushed open the door with her.

Her clumsiness, the note of rambling apology in her voice, all comforting hallmarks of her former self but at the same time clues that he found singularly worrying. On the journey from his house to hers, the ease that they had felt with each other had slowly dripped away, the conversation becoming stilted as they drew closer to her flat. They were both suffering from nerves, he cautioned himself and every new relationship stumbled awkwardly at first. The Grid had defined them for so long, they would have to get to know each other in their new roles.

She walked ahead of him into a small corridor, flanked by even more doors. There had been only one entrance to her old flat, here there were doors upon doors. How many did he have to open to find her? There had been compensation for her loss, a resettlement package, various security measures taken on her behalf. How much of this flat had been her choice?

The keys jangled as she opened another lock and she led him across the threshold into her life. Harry quickly glanced around, scanning every feature, assessing the layout as he usually did when entering a room for the first time. It was brighter than her old place, with walls of white and yellow, blond pine on the floor, Scandinavian in its character. Placed on top of the modern sensibility, were objects belonging to another time, flowing brocade curtains, a tapestry couch, an overstuffed chair. It felt strangely inviting and impersonal at the same time. He drove his hands deeper into his pockets, feeling out of place, trying to figure out where he belonged in her world. Was he also the past, imposing himself on her present?

She walked through to the kitchen and he trailed behind her, stopping when he realised he was behaving like a pup following his mistress. He leaned against the doorjamb, attempting an air of nonchalance that belied his inner nerves. A bottle of red wine sat on the counter and beside it a half-empty glass. She quickly crossed to it, dumping the contents of the glass into the sink, and washing it out under a blast of water.

"Help yourself to anything." She deposited the glass in the dish rack and using her body to mask her actions, she surreptitiously placed the bottle in a lower cupboard. "I don't have much in the way of food..."

"I'm sure I can find something."

Opening and closing doors, she moved around the small kitchen with the industry of an ant scouting for food. "We could always go out, there's place around the corner, they make marvelous pastas."

"Ruth."

She ignored him, carrying on with her foraging, opening the fridge door, revealing glaringly empty wire shelves, and quickly closing it before he could notice.

"Ruth."

She fluttered past him and he reached out, grabbing her wrist. Her arm was slender in his fingers, the bone prominent beneath his palm. He wanted to tell her that she needed more than a bottle of merlot in her pantry but that was not his place. Her eyes darted about and wrinkle of distress moved quickly across her brow.

"I haven't felt much like cooking lately," she said, explaining away the lack of food.

"I haven't either until today."

Pulling her closer, he tried to read her face but her eyes remained lowered. He bent his head, brushing his lips along the corner of her mouth. She stiffened, her head canting back, her hand coming up to rest lightly on his chest. Not an outright refusal but enough to make him question his actions. Her palm pushed gently against him.

"I should get changed."

She gave slight twist but his grip tightened, his other hand coming up to rest on her hip, his palm fitting perfectly on the curve. He didn't want her to change, to erase the scent of him that still clung to her. He nudged her toward him, his fingers sensing a fissure of resistance.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I just haven't had much company, that's all."

Giving him a fleeting smile, she stepped back, and without missing a beat, he took a step with her. His hand slid around her waist, fingers splayed cross her spine, pulling her back to him but she remained tensely coiled. She shifted her head away and his hand came up to cradle her jaw. Finding the tender spot behind her ear, he massaged it gently, looking for the knot that would unravel her. His fingers drifted down to the ridge of the zipper, feeling the clasp that had revealed her to him.

"Ruth, it just us. There's no one else here."

"I know, logically I know that. It's just...it's..."

His thumb gently glided over her throat, catching the words before they spilled out. The past. How long could they skate around the edge of that particular pond before it cracked and they fell through into its unforgiving water? He pressed his lips to her cheek, tasting the familiar combination of guilt and regret. He was responsible for that guilt, he had to ask even though he dreaded the answer.

"Do you want me to leave?"

He held his breath waiting for her response.

"No, no, I want you to stay. I feel...disjointed. I don't know how to explain it."

With a sigh of relief, he leant his forehead into hers, closing his eyes as he pressed against her brow, willing himself into that teeming mind of hers. She was in there somewhere, the Ruth of his imaginings. He needed to know that he was not a regret or that their evening together had not fostered more guilt. He could not ask such questions, though, to do so would prove him weak and vulnerable. The language of emotion was foreign tongue to him, its various nuances lost on his inarticulate lips. His was a world of code and subterfuge; never let them know what you're truly thinking. His fingers glided along her shoulder retracing the skin he had caressed the previous evening, her throat, her neckline, the alluring swell of her breasts, satin sliding beneath his palm, leaving him to say the only words he could manage.

"No matter what, this will always be my favourite dress."

She gave a small sigh, her hand rising to his hip, as she swayed into him. He brushed her lips with the faintest of kisses, and then one more, pulling back, enticing her toward him, willing her to come to him. Her fingers pressed into his waist and she raised her mouth to his, but he teased away from her. She leaned into him, searching for a kiss, and feeling that she was unfolding, he obliged. His tongue ran across her lips, subtle, coaxing, searching for entrance and the key that would unlock her reticence, releasing the woman who had come to him last night. Her lips were supple but her body remained unyielding. He bent her back against the counter, his tongue insistent against her lips, refusing to lose her. With a tiny moan, she gave way, letting him in and he entered her with a desperate force. His hands moved down her back, his leg moving between hers, pressing her against the cupboard. The satin of her dress bunching in his fingers, ruched along her thigh as she pressed back into him. The last of her defenses crumbling, muscle by torturous muscle until she molded against him.

The novelty of kissing in her kitchen did not wear off and they stood, grinding against each other, young once again in their illicit tryst. He faltered as she pushed into him and he placed his hand on the counter for balance. The granite was cool beneath his palm, sturdy and secure. She was small, the counter was low, and with the right amount of pressure he could lift her on to it. He gave a small moan into her mouth. How many times had he done this? Used sex to avoid emotion, pain, the past. They would have to face it at some point. He gave her one last kiss and pulled away. She stood before him, chest heaving, eyes blinking.

"You seem to have a very healthy appetite."

"As do you, Miss Evershed."

She graced him with a smile that echoed in her eyes, so rarely seen, that he stared at her, completely lost in its warmth. Her hand slid around his hip, glancing across his back pocket and pausing to playfully pat the billfold that he kept there. The move left him both delighted and puzzled, his mind whirring with a question.

"How did you..."

"What?"

"How did you lift the USB stick from that Leslie fellow?"

"Oh, it's all about diversion. Fiona taught me."

"Well, Fiona had a lot of diversions."

Her eyes narrowed, her lips pursed in a moue of disapproval.

"Professionally speaking, of course." He turned away, looking about the kitchen. "Why don't I order something in?" he offered, deftly changing the subject.

"Yes, that's probably the best thing to do." She untangled herself from his arms. "I'm just going to..." She motioned down the hall. "Do you need anything?"

"I'll just wait."

He was very good at waiting.

...

He woke with a start, a hard object colliding with his lower vertebrae, sending vibrations through his spine. He knew exactly where he was, the scent of her was everywhere. The bed was softer, sweeter, far more inviting than his. He turned over, the sheets crisp under his skin, still new, yet to be worn in. She moving restlessly about, murmuring intelligible words in her sleep. He lay for a moment debating whether to wake her or to let the dream run its course. Her arm thrashed about hitting him in the chest and he placed his hand on it shaking it gently.

"Ruth."

She moaned in her sleep, pushing him away.

"Ruth, wake up."

"What?" Her voice was thick with sleep.

"You were having a bad dream."

"Harry?" Disoriented, she moved her head groggily, speaking into the darkness. "What are you doing here?"

His heart constricted at her question but he tried to make light of it. "Sleeping. That is until you kneed me in the back.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry." Her mind awoke, slowly filtering back into the bedroom with him. "I'm so sorry I didn't mean to."

The sheets rustled as she adjusted her position, moving away from him, a stream of cool air rushing between them.

"No." He reached out for her in the darkness and found her arm. "Don't go away."

Her breath broke the air with ragged puffs as she lay on her back but he couldn't tell if she was crying. Unsure of how to comfort her, he lay still, waiting for her to speak. She let out a long, slow breath.

"I thought I was back..."

She left the sentence unfinished. He knew what she meant. She didn't need to tell him her nightmare; he had lived it with her.

A sliver of light peeked through a crack in the drapes, allowing him to see the outline of her body underneath the sheets but not the expression on her face. Moving his hand up her arm, he found her face and traced it with his fingers, finding her cheeks reassuringly dry.

"Do you have the dream often?"

"Not if I have enough wine before I go to bed," she whispered.

"You shouldn't do that." He chided in a low voice, matching her hushed tone, though there was no one to hear them.

"Isn't that why you drink?"

"It doesn't stop the dreams."

The bed dipped as she turned on her side toward him. She raised her hand to his cheek, stroking his face in comfort.

"What do you dream about?"

"The bomb that killed Ros. Any number of people I've lost over the years."

She gave a soft hum of understanding as her fingers moved to the back of his head, looping gentle circles at the nape of his neck. They lay in silence, a whisper of wind rising and falling outside her window, occasionally rattling the panes, looking for a way in. His eyes drowsily closed, delighting in the feel of her fingers.

"Harry?"

He gave a small moan, not wanting to interrupt the trance her fingers had lulled him into.

"Did you ever dream about me?"

He slid his foot along her leg, cold toes on her skin. "Those were the dreams I didn't want to wake from."

In the sanctuary of her room, with her fingers working the muscles of his neck, the feel of her thigh against his, he would have answered anything she asked of him. Silently, he asked her the same question, afraid of the answer. There was no need to ask, she knew him.

"Yes, I dreamed about you. And I thought about you every day when I should have been thinking about other things." She sighed, her fingers sliding over his chin as her hand dropped away from his face. "Oh Harry, what are we doing?"

He found her hand on the counterpane and clasped it in his, bringing it up to lie between their faces.

"Exactly what we should be doing."

"But all the others-"

"Shh." He squeezed her hand. "Don't bring them in here. Let this be just for us."

"Nothing lasts, Harry. Especially for people like us."

"Don't say that."

Her warm breath washed across his knuckles, her fingers tense in his. She was thinking, even in the darkness he could hear the ticking of her brain.

"After the bomb," she whispered, "I didn't know what had happened to you. I thought everything was over. That I would have to start again. It's hard to live that way."

"You don't have to worry, I'm here." He pressed his lips to her knuckles, kissing the tiny ridges.

They lay for a moment, hands together, supplicants praying for relief from their dreams. She moved her hand in his, fingers winding into each other, her thumb running up and down his palm. She kissed the soft flesh at the base of his thumb.

"Don't make me more than I am. I don't want to disappoint you."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I've so many pieces missing."

"We all do."

She slipped her hand out of his and pressed it against his chest. "No, you're solid and whole."

She dragged her fingers through the fine whorls of hair, her thumb grazing his nipple. Scales built up over years of deception fell away under her fingertips. He wanted to talk to her, divulge all of his secrets, to be close to another human being without hiding behind lies and deceit. Her fingers followed the line of his hair down to his stomach, the muscles of his belly involuntarily contracting in anticipation. To his dismay, she detoured, venturing along his hipbone to his outer thigh, kneading the flesh between her fingers.

"I'm not as strong as you, Harry. I'm stumbling along."

Searching for her in the darkness, he kissed the hollow spot at her shoulder, the hardness of her collarbone beneath his lips. "Let me stumble with you."

"And if I fall?

"Take me down with you."

Now was the time to say. The words formed in his head, his breath knew their shape, but he couldn't say them. It was too soon, it was the last piece of defense he had left. He couldn't give it all over to her, it would leave him too exposed.

"Come away with me."

They weren't the right words, but the question rose from the swell of emotion inside him, falling from his lips before he had time to contemplate them thoroughly.

"On a holiday?" she asked.

"Something more than that."

She stiffened beside him, her fingers halting their journey. She had read his mind in the past; surely, she knew what he was thinking now.

"We've only just-

"I know. I know." He agreed softly, pulling the question back and laying it to rest. He ran his hand down her back, up and down the ridge of her spine and she shivered under his fingers. Her hands resumed their exploration, gliding back up to his chest.

"Don't ask too much of me, Harry. Not yet."

As long as her hands were on him, they were still connected; her hesitancy was a measure to protect herself and not meant to push him away.

In the time since they had awoken, the temperature of the room had dropped, and he pulled her closer, wrapping the sheets around them, a cocoon against the outside world. This time, she did not balk at his protection but pressed into him, finding shelter in his body. He held her close, hard bones wrapped in delicate skin, sleep having lost its allure, her body calling to him. His hands languidly roamed over her contours, relishing the touch of her until a hunger stirred beneath his feeling of contentment. He leaned across her in the darkness, missing her mouth, kissing her cheek, his lips sliding down to her ear.

"Is this right, Harry?" she whispered against him. "Tell me that it is. I want it to be right."

He didn't know and at that moment, in the warmth of her bed with her soft body under his, he didn't care. There would be other days to pick it all apart but not now. His lips moved at her ear.

"Let go, Ruth. Be with me."

Her mouth found his in silent surrender, and he groaned into her lips with thankfulness. She moved against his body, thoughts of right and wrong melting away. His fingers slid down to her thigh, flesh slick with desire. Her lips pressed under his jaw, planting open kisses on his throat. He rolled onto his back, bringing her over to lie on top of him, his erection pressing against her pubic bone. His hands smoothed down the slope of her back and she moved against him creating a delicious friction, his fingers digging into the swell of her backside. She brought her lips down to his chest, tongue flicking over his nipples. His finger found her shoulders, pulling her up to him.

The sheets fell away, air washing cool over their burning bodies. She straddled him, guiding him insider her, setting the rhythm as she curved above him. His hands were drawn to her breasts, molding his palms around them, marvelling at how she held within her equal parts sorrow and passion, making her all the more magnificent to him. Her thighs pressed against him as she swayed over him, her movements growing faster and faster. He gripped her waist, searching for control, wanting to make the pleasure last. This woman broken and bruised had total mastery over him. She was only doing what he had done so many times; assuaging the pain of the past by finding pleasure in the present. He pulled her down, her breasts pushing against his chest, her mouth at his ear, the tip of her tongue dipping in. A groan rose from the depth of his longing and he rolled them over, pushing her back against the pillows. Slipping away, they found each other again

In the darkness, they were nothing, naked and exposed, panting breaths and thundering hearts. No present, no past only the heat of the immediate. He hung on as long as he could, feeling her pulse around him, her limbs trembling with intensity and he followed her, falling over the edge, whispering her name.

Her head rested on his chest and he gathered her in, her leg sliding over his. He lay awake, looking into the darkness, listening to the soft sound of her breaths as they fell into an even rhythm. He brought his hand to her hair, smoothing it away from her face.

"You're still soft, Ruth."

She didn't hear him, sleep having claimed her and he kissed the top of her head. He found solace in the fact that he had given her a moment of peace. Staring into the darkness, he refused to close his eyes, afraid that he would wake from the dream. He had to find a way to make it real. The wind rattled the windowpane, followed by a soft moan when it found it could not come in. He drew the bedclothes tighter around them. At some point, they would have to leave the warmth of her bed. Earlier that day, they had struggled in the intimacy of her kitchen; he did not want to contemplate what would become of them in the cold light of day.


	12. Chapter 12

_A/N – Hello lovely readers, thank you so much for continuing with this story and a heartfelt thanks to those who have taken the time to review. I set out to try and keep it in cannon, so for the tender-hearted there's still time for you to turn back. For the brave, there is one more chapter after this._

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The weather, fickle, unpredictable, had changed in the space of an evening. The heat of summer, deciding that its warm embrace was needed elsewhere had left the ball, making room for the swirl of autumn, the wind plucking the leaves from trees. The cool air clung to Harry as he entered through double doors of Thames House, staying with him as he caught the lift, trailing behind as he walked the corridors and finally as he passed through the pods. He walked across the Grid, head down, unwilling to stop until he had reached his desk. He stood in his office, slightly out of breath, trying unsuccessfully to outrun a certain disquiet that he couldn't quite shake. He shrugged his shoulders in his great black overcoat, the weight of the wool making him long for the heat he had so recently cursed.

Before he could take off his coat and settle himself in, Lucas appeared in the doorway, Ruth following closely on his heels. An armful of files hid her body but there was no doubt as to the colour of her outfit. Black, from head to toe. She stood with Lucas on the other side of his desk and he regarded them as he peeled off his gloves.

"Do you have it?"

Ruth dropped the pile of files on the desk, the weight of the papers giving a resounding thud. She withheld one sheet, keeping it in her hand.

"It's all there, the trail from Nightingale to Clarence."

He opened the file, flipping through the first few pages. "Anyone else know?"

"Only us," she replied.

His eyes met hers, the inadvertent double meaning of the question apparent only to them. Her eyes were reassuringly blue, holding his gaze a little longer than strictly necessary. His heart lifted in his chest and then fell back into place. He had left her the previous evening, kissing her goodnight on her doorstep and he desperately wanted to kiss her good morning.

Lucas crossed his arms, seemingly unaware of anything different between his colleagues. "The Prime Minister is slated to make his decision today."

"Any other contenders?" Harry slipped off his overcoat.

"One other." Ruth leant across the desk and extracted a paper. "William Towers. From the other side of the House."

"My enemy's enemy is now my friend, the benefits of a coalition government." Harry scanned the paperwork. "Do we have anything on him?"

"He seems clean."

"Seems?"

"If he's dirty, he's not Nightingale dirty," Lucas assured him.

"I have a meeting DG set with the for nine. Do we have a failsafe should the brass not wish to disturb the waters?"

"I've got a reporter we can that we can leak it to," Ruth assured him.

"I'd best head up." He raised an eyebrow at Lucas. "Care to accompany me?"

"Sure, I'll get my things." Giving a nod, Lucas strode out of the room.

"I'm going to offer him Section Chief." He felt compelled to divulge this to her before asking the man himself as if sharing his plans would somehow bring them closer. An unfinished smile flitted across her face and she quickly looked away. The edges of his unease became sharper. He gathered up the folder. "I don't know how long I'll be upstairs."

"The service for Ros is this afternoon. I don't think we can postpone it again."

He rubbed his fingers over his brow. "Yes, of course. I'll be there. We'll ride up together."

"That's alright, I booked a car for Tariq and myself."

For some reason, the information unsettled him. Did she not want to be in the same car as him? He shrugged off the twinge of insecurity. Perhaps it was better that they not be so entwined at the office. There was a strange tension about her, a stiffness to her shoulders, everything coiled tightly within her small frame. They would have to find a way around this, he could not release it the same way he had done in her kitchen. She had been right, that morning, to ask where they were going, for now, the waters were uncharted and they were sailing without a compass. He looked at her, searching for guidance on how they should proceed. She motioned to his neck.

"Your tie is crooked."

More than anything, he wanted her to close the distance between and straighten his tie, any small act of intimacy to show that what had happened between them had not been a dream. It would not necessarily broadcast to the Grid that they had slept together. Even Connie, traitorous cow that she was, had fussed over him before the Queen's Birthday Honours. If he had not been so desperate for a decent analyst, he would have left her in that forsaken bunker. _No new ring on your finger Harry_.

"I haven't found one that fits," he murmured, belatedly realising he had said the words aloud. Ruth gave him a curious look. "The tie," he said by way of explanation, knowing that it made no sense.

There was something she wasn't telling him. They had fallen back into the safety of the Grid personas. Section Head and Analyst. He motioned to the paper she was holding.

"What's that?"

He took a step around the desk towards her and she handed the document to him.

"It's from the Met. Single car accident. One fatality."

He scanned the report, his eyes stopping on the name. Vincent Leslie. Shit.

"The IT man from Romaldi's office," she reminded him.

"I remember." His fingers curled on the paper. Did it ever end?

"They found out we were in their servers and they know who let it happen."

"It was filed as an accident." The words sounded hollow even to him.

"You said it yourself; we know what these people are capable of."

"It could very well be a coincidence." He handed the paper back to her.

"There are no coincidences in this business, Harry."

"You can't hold yourself responsible."

He took a step closer, wanting to assure her that it was not her fault, his hand half rising and then falling back to his side.

"He's dead because of what I did." She moved away from him, her face hardening. "Just like-

"Ruth!" His tone was low and harsh, stopping her before she could say the name. His eyes bore into her, willing her to rise above the connection. "This is nothing like that."

As long as he was alive, he had promised himself she would never experience a horror like that day again. He could protect her but he could not take away her guilt, it would always be there, lingering beneath the surface, it only took one scratch to expose the raw nerve. She hid it well, her face falling into the mask she had worn that night at the restaurant. He wanted to pull her to him and tell her not to succumb to a hardened heart. He clenched his hands, resisting the urge to touch her, feeling the sand of their relationship seeping through his fingers. Everything they had built up over the weekend was falling apart. It strengthened his resolve to take her away from that place before they had lost it all together.

She shifted her weight and took a deep breath. "There's more."

There was always more. He didn't want to hear any of it, afraid that it would be yet another pin removed from their fabric that held them together. "Is it pertinent to this?" He tapped the folder. "Can it wait?"

She nodded, fingers running over the edge of the report from the Met.

"I have to go." He didn't want to go. He looked at his watch. "Will you be alright?"

"Yes," she answered, "I'm fine." She turned and walked out of his office.

He looked down at the file folder suppressing the urge to sweep the whole bloody business off his desk and walk out after her. He had to do something to keep her from slipping away. It was time, he could feel it. He gathered up the folder and left his office.

...

The tyres turned in endless revolution, his hands tightly gripping the wheel as he steered the car down the road, heading in a direction that was not his design. He focused his eyes on the horizon, a bank of clouds looming in the distance.

"You're very quiet," Ruth observed.

He nodded, not sparing a glance for his passenger. He would say companion but that privilege had somehow fallen away. She knew why he was quiet; she was the cause of it. The distance between them in the front seat of his car was as wide as any ocean and as impossible to bridge. The silence stretched on, worn and used, the heady crackle of their earlier encounters flattened. He should have done as she suggested and let her catch a ride back into the city with Lucas but he couldn't let her go, not just yet.

"I thought it was a nice service." Her fingers wove in and out of each other, as she fidgeted restlessly, unable to withstand the quiet. "I think funerals are mostly for the living, though. A chance to find that elusive sense of closure. Some people never get that."

He let her comment settle around them, unable to put his thoughts into words, his tongue weighed down by the silence. He had felt strangely calm during the service, sitting in the chapel beside her, an aura of peace surrounding him in the secluded location. Everything had fallen into place. It was true, his timing was off, he could have waited, chosen a more romantic setting but he had been moved, not by the funeral but by her and for once in his life he wanted to give into his feelings, act on them, reveal himself to the only one who had ever truly understood him. It wasn't a notion brought on by a sense of grief or overwrought emotion; he wanted to be the one to write the coda to the last stanza of his life. It had been building in him for years, laying dormant over the time she had been away, each encounter with her over the past week peeling away the layers of his calcified heart. In his mind, they were to come away from that day as one, a future together, say farewell to Ros and the Service and all the ghosts that stood between them. Instead, he was left to wonder about the thousands of opportunities he had missed where she would have been his.

She stretched her leg, her feet disturbing her black satchel that lay on the floor. At one time, it had held such promise, that day on the embankment when he had fixed the strap, catching a glimpse of hope in her eyes. Now, it held proof that no one was to be trusted. If he was to come away with only one thing that day at least she had given him a purpose. He had done it for Adam, he would do it for Ros. Blood for blood

"I'm going away for a few days."

"What?" Her head anxiously swerved towards him. "Where?"

"I can't tell you."

"What if there's fallout from the Nightingale revelations?"

"You have my number. I only turn it off for one reason."

Her eyes closed at the sting of his words, a reminder of what they had shared. He carried on, a coldness stealing about his heart, lacking the will to fight it.

"Lucas and I have made a decision regarding the new hire."

"We don't have to talk about work."

"It's all that I have."

"Oh, Harry." She sighed and turned away from him looking out over the fields as they drove past.

Large swathes of fertile land turned to woods, trees overgrown and crowding the road, giving way to manicured hedgerows. His eyes flitted over the scenery, barely acknowledging the beauty of the landscape. Everything was empty to him. He rubbed his thumb over the top of the steering wheel.

"You said Ros was trying to tell us something? That something was missing from her life. What do you think it was?"

Drops of rain spattered on the windshield and he turned on the wipers, the rhythmic sound of their blades helping to soothe his agitated state. She remained quiet and he thought his question would go unanswered.

"This life," she finally replied, lifting her hand in a gesture to the window. "This pastoral splendor, the ideal we have of England. Peace and tranquility. Living in a bucolic cottage in the country." She shifted in her seat. "I don't think she ever had that. She was shunted around from one diplomatic post to another because of her father. The one home she did have here she had to sell to pay his legal fees."

He thought about her assessment, wondering if it were true of Ros, what it would be like to have such a home. "Is it so wrong to want a life like that?"

"Is that what you want?"

He could feel her eyes on him. Yes, he did want that, with her but it seemed rather futile to say it.

"Haven't you ever thought about it?" he asked, genuinely curious.

"I had it, Harry, it was taken from me."

He gripped the steering wheel, silently cursing how every question lead back to that wound. Was he to be punished for his decisions for the rest of his life, was there no redemption? There were so many days he needed to strike from the ledger of his life so that he would be worthy of her. Her hand lay on the console between them, palm up, silently inviting him. His fingers flexed on the wheel as he quelled the instinct to reach over and take it. His breath caught in his throat and he fought to steady himself, still reeling from the double punch of her rejection and Blake's betrayal. She took her hand away, placing it back on her lap.

"I don't know if we can move on from this, Harry."

Her words hit him in the sternum. "Why do you say that?"

"You said it yourself we can't go back, and now you've gone and accelerated everything."

His chest constricted and a bead of anger formed, the question that he had buried in the back of his mind bursting to the forefront of his consciousness. Why George and not him? Was he so lacking that she wouldn't even consider a life with him? Surely, there was more between them, a bond that stretched across time and distance. To ask those questions would sound petulant; he could not descend to that.

"I didn't ask you on a whim, Ruth. We have a history."

"Oh God, Harry." She tilted her head, looking heavenward. "That's entirely the problem."

As if in response to her words, the sky opened up and the rain fell harder. With a sharp motion, he switched the wipers to a higher setting. The tempo of the blades accelerated, batting the streaming water away.

"You didn't even think about it." His eyes fell to the speedometer watching the needle tick up.

"Why do you do this? Why do you insist on cornering me?"

"When? When did I corner you?"

She opened her mouth and then quickly shut it, biting back her words. He pressed on, his threshold for confrontation much higher than hers.

"You said we were more than words."

"Don't use what I said against me." She shook her head in warning.

"But it's perfectly alright for you to use my words against me?"

"I'm not." She let out an exasperated huff. "It's too soon. We haven't even...

"What?"

She didn't respond.

"What haven't we done, Ruth?"

"Nothing."

He gritted his teeth at that answer; he had heard it too many times from Jane. It signalled an argument that he could not win. What had they not done? For a fleeting second, he closed his eyes. The three words that had circled in his mind for days, years if he was honest with himself, formed on his lips. Say it you fool, say it. He clenched his jaw. To say them now would smack of desperation, he had already laid himself bare before her, he needed to salvage what shreds of dignity he still had left.

The weight of his foot descended on the pedal, and the engine turned over, the motor thrumming beneath him, the one thing he could control. He sped up, riding the bumper of the car ahead of them, swerving out into the other lane and passing the vehicle.

"Slow down, Harry," she pleaded softly.

He couldn't, it wasn't in his nature.

The woods thinned as the side of the road became populated by buildings and houses, the two lanes widening as more traffic joined them. The city, pulling them back into its circling chaos.

When had he ever cornered her? His flexed jaw, remembering their encounters. The kitchenette, the briefing room, her kitchen, the fence they had recently stood against. The only time they had found each other was when she had come to him.

He glanced over at her but she was looking out the passenger side window. Her chest moved with rapid breaths, whether from anger or sadness he couldn't tell.

All too soon, they came upon her street. It held none of its former appeal. Gone was the heady anticipation wrapped in a seductive blanket of humidity. The pavement was slick with rotting leaves, the limbs of the tree black against a grey sky. The temperature of their romance had changed with the weather. He pulled up outside her flat.

"Do you want to come in?" she asked, her eyes searching his face.

He gripped the steering wheel like a lifeline. God yes, he wanted to come inside with her. To push her up against those empty cupboards and plunder her mouth, hoist her onto the counter and take her with the ferocity of his wounded pride, demanding that she come back to him. It would be empty and futile, missing that indefinable element that had sweetened their other encounters.

"I don't think that would be a good idea." He kept his eyes averted, afraid that if he did look at her, he would say yes, that he would once again push too far, too fast.

"Alright." Her response was barely audible. She was hurt. He had hurt her as she had hurt him. They were such poor caretakers of each other's hearts. She drew a shaky breath. "Does this mean...?"

"I don't know," he answered flatly.

She looked upward, biting her lip, words falling hesitantly. "Maybe it would be better if we..."

Her hand rested on the door handle, her body half turned to him, waiting for him to contradict the sentiment that they had ended. If he kissed her, would that heal everything? All he had were actions. He wasn't even entirely sure what had happened between them except that something had been lost. He did not have the words to repair whatever damage he had caused. With no answer forthcoming, she stiffened beside him, her wall rising in protection. His shutters lowered in response, pride unwilling to bend. He looked out into the street.

"Yes, it might be better if we did."

She lifted the handle and slid out of the car. He was prepared for her to slam the door in his face but she closed it with an unexpected gentleness.

He did not wait until she was safely inside her flat but abruptly pulled the car away from the kerb, the tyres screeching from the tightness of the turn. His eyes flickered to the review mirror. Her dark figure stood forlornly on the pavement, watching the car as it drove away. Damn! He hit the steering wheel with a leaded fist. She had warned him; he had overshot and asked too much of her. She was right, how could they go back from this. He closed his eyes suppressing a wave of humiliation. The pain churned in his stomach, hot coals banking into fiery anger. A plan formed. He would avenge Ros, and that would be the last blood on his hands. Except there would be no blood, it would be done neat and well aged. That would be the coda. He would leave, removing himself from Ruth, refusing to be drawn back into her orbit only to be cast out again. He would drive through the night, giving himself no time to think of the taste of her skin and the touch her lips. Punching a button on the console, he opened the window, a gust of wind rushing in, rain splattering his face. He didn't care, all the better to remove the last of her fragrance from his car. Still, he could not breathe, the fresh air was not enough. His fingers scratched at the knot of his tie and he attempted to swallow the lump that had formed in his throat. Cursing in frustration, he pulled the car over, easing out of traffic to the side of the road. He sat with his hands limply on the steering wheel, the engine idling beneath him, the incessant drone of the wiper blades going unheeded. It was useless; her scent was in his pores, she was under his skin. Every breath he took was her. There was only one way he could ever be free.


	13. Chapter 13

_A/N - Thank you once again for following along and_ a warm _thanks to those who have taken the time to review. Hope you enjoy the last chapter. Cheers!_

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Measure of last resort. How many times had it come to that? Harry ran his thumb ran over the slim volume of protocols written by an unknown bureaucrat who would never face the choices that he did. When all other avenues are exhausted, salt the earth and start over. He slid the book into the leather case and placed it back in his safe. The blinking letters scrolled across the display, signalling that the door was firmly closed. Secrets returned to the darkness. Keeping secrets locked away was easy, it was far harder to bury them once they had been revealed. He leaned his head against the metal casing, vainly trying to clear his mind, visions of what he had unleashed floating before him. No matter what he did, there would always be blood on his hands. The EMP was a huge gamble; its effects untested, the threat to civilian life unknown. Perhaps the gods would be kind for once and no lives would be lost. He sighed. The gods were never on his side. He was alone, no one to console him, only platitudes. Better one suffer than a nation grieve.

Straightening up from his crouched position, he winced in pain as his joints creaked. He took a deep breath, filling the hollow space that now resided between his ribs, his mind disengaging, pulling away from the emotion of the moment. It made it easier to deal with loss, with pain, with her. He ran his fingers through his hair, deliberating between a scotch and a coffee. A knot of tension worried at the back his neck, the dull throb of a headache rising to his temples. Caffeine would be better, the scotch he would save for a later hour. He stepped out of his office and into the controlled chaos of the Grid. Personnel rushed backed and forth, dealing with the rippling effects of his decision. Disasters, like miracles, always needed a plausible real world explanation. No one could ever know the truth.

Lucas and Tariq were in deep conversation by a bank of computers. Beth stood beside them, looking as though she had always been a part of the Grid. Too late to worry about upgrading her clearance. He crossed over to them.

"Anything to report?"

"There's been a lot of technical issues," Tariq explained. "Computers with fried circuits. Alarms set off, security systems down."

"Yes," Harry conceded, "We're certain to get an earful when the final cost has been tallied. Lucas, any word on casualties?"

"Accidents at intersections," Lucas filled in. "We're still waiting on reports from hospitals."

"Talwar?"

"She's in an interrogation room," Beth piped up.

Harry gave her a sideways look. "Still here, Miss Bailey?"

"Like a bad penny." She gave him a pert smile.

He hadn't quite decided if she was a blessing or a curse. He had asked for an agent to be delivered to him and perhaps fate had finally listened. He remembered her as a strong candidate but she was brash and cocky. Maybe that's what they needed. It was not his decision to make. He turned back to Lucas.

"I'm briefing the Home Secretary; get me as much information as you can." He looked about, a certain voice missing from the conversation. "Where's Ruth?"

Lucas and Tariq gave each other a look, the younger man shrugging his shoulders.

"We thought she was with you," said Lucas.

The words, said in innocence, hit a nerve. Harry kept his face immobile.

"Obviously, she isn't," he replied with a biting edge.

Lucas gave him a curious. Hopefully, the team would chalk up his remark to his usually acerbic manner and not divine the true cause.

He turned his head, his neck muscles protesting in response and he remembered his initial quest. Making his escape, he drove his hands into his pockets and headed towards the kitchen. Lucas had been off the Grid for most of the past week, Tariq was young and Beth new. Surely, none of them would suspect that anything untoward had happened. All he had to do was put one foot in front of the other, keep moving, hold on for a few more weeks. He reached the kitchen and stopped abruptly in the doorway. Ruth stood inside, leaning against the counter, a teabag poised over her cup, her brows drawn together in a troubled frown. He rocked back on his heels, intent on quietly turning around and leaving. The scuff on his shoes gave him away and her head snapped up. She quickly collected herself.

"You don't have to keep avoiding me, Harry."

He turned back to her. "I wasn't aware that I was."

"You've gone out of your way not to be alone in a room with me."

Whether or not she meant it as such, he took her observation as a taunt, that he lacked the fortitude to be in the same room as her. Earlier, she had accused him of feeling sorry for himself and along with that came the insinuation that he was weak. He could not let her assertion go unanswered.

"That's not true. We were alone in my office when you briefed me on Talwar's location." His hands dug deeper into his pockets. "And you stood beside me when I made the call."

She bowed her head and her shoulders stiffened. She had no reason to flinch. Her hands were clean.

"You know what I mean." Dropping the teabag in the cup, she kept her gaze lowered, not meeting his eyes.

Through judicious manoeuvring, he had managed to ensure all of their interactions centered on work. None of the personal was allowed to filter into their conversations. On the occasion when the subject had threatened to veer towards him or his motives, he had summarily dismissed her. There was no choice; he was her boss, after all, nothing more. Frankly, he had no idea what to say to her, indeed if anything could be said, any anger at her having dissipated on the drive to and from Scotland. He barely understood the feeling of desolation he carried around, let alone summon the capacity to explain it to her. In any event, he was not weak. He stepped into the cramped space, challenging her allegation.

"I'm here with you now."

He kept his voice as light as possible demonstrating that her proximity meant nothing to him. He reached across the counter and picked up a mug, coming as close as he could without touching her in an effort to underscore his point. Folding in on herself, she pulled her cardigan close around her chest, hiding her figure with the bulk of the black wool. He raised an eyebrow. There was more than one way to avoid someone. It didn't matter; he remembered every dip and curve of her body. The hollow of her throat, the indent of her ribs, the satin of her thigh, everything. He quickly looked away. None of that it mattered now, they were colleagues.

"I need a full breakdown for Towers."

"I'll put a report together detailing the repercussions."

He turned back to the pot and poured out a liquid that he presumed was coffee. "And we'll need to give them a line."

"Yes, we've already told them it was a power surge. Tube malfunction."

Having steeped her tea, she fished out the bag with a spoon and reached for the bin to deposit it, her manner hurried in an effort to get on with her work. At the same moment, he moved to the fridge, searching for milk. His shoulder brushed up against hers and all movement ceased. He didn't breath and neither did she, each held suspended in a fragile web, acutely aware of other. One slight twist and he could gather her in his arms. He closed his eyes, longing for the touch of her but fearing the consequence. By silent consent, they parted in the same instant, careful to maintain a calculated degree of distance in the confined space as they circled around each other. She stepped to go past him but he adjusted his body, crowding the exit. He wasn't finished with her.

"Find out if there is any chatter about Abib."

"Of course."

"And I need to know how Talwar managed to operate right under our noses."

"Alright."

"Put together a list of comprehensive steps going forward. How we can avoid this in the future."

She looked up at him, her eyes widening at the scope of his requests. "You're not serious."

"Did I say something to make you think otherwise?"

The muscles of her neck grew taut in an effort not to bite back against his demands. "I'll see what I can do."

"I'm going to need better than that."

He looked at her over the rim of his mug assessing how his words had fallen. If he was not to be part of her life, he would make sure she had no life. He drew himself up to his full height filling the room, forcing her to take a step back in order to maintain her distance. He took a sip of his coffee and grimaced at the bitter taste.

" And I need it all before tomorrow." He set down his cup; adding more milk to the concoction on the off chance it would sweeten the drink. He slowly stirred it with a spoon, stretching out the length of her captivity. "We're in for a long night."

Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. She was no innocent, she knew why he was making these demands. Deciding not to rise to his bait, she leaned against the counter and sipped her tea. The cup shook in her hand and she quickly raised her other hand to still it. With careful deliberation, she set the mug down on the counter. He wanted to ignore it, pretend that he had not seen a moment of weakness but he was curious to see if he had caused it.

"Are you alright?" he asked perfunctorily, manager to employee.

"I'm fine," she answered, equally cool.

"You're shaking."

"It's nothing."

His eyes pinned her to the spot, wondering if he could draw the reason from her through silence. Aware of his gaze, she crossed her arms over her chest. He always forgot how small she was, her intellect, her presence in his life, larger than her size. She drew an unsteady breath.

"How many people do you think we..." she trailed off.

"What?"

She shook her head. "Never mind."

He knew what she meant. How many people had he sacrificed? Her half question chipped away at his belligerence. He had feet of clay. She had used the plural, making herself part of the decision. Had she for once not cast the blame solely upon him? They had so many enemies, why was he fighting her?

"Tell me," he asked, his tone more conciliatory.

"It's nothing," she continued. "I'm bit shaky because I haven't eaten."

She reached up into the cupboard and attempted to extract an antiquated biscuit tin. Is that how she had survived all this time, by ferreting away shortbread? She stood on her tiptoes and he moved to help her, but her fingers latched on to the edge of the container, sliding it along the shelf and into her grasp. He leaned against the counter, she didn't need him. Setting the tin down, she attempted to open it.

"Have you set a date?"

He looked at her quizzically.

"Your resignation."

"Ah yes." He watched as she struggled with the tin. "Why? Are you planning a farewell party for me?"

"I was wondering if there would be a transition period."

"Of some sort, I would suspect."

Picking up the tin, she held it against her stomach, attempting to get better leverage, focusing on it rather than on him. Her fingers slipped on the rim, the lid remaining stubbornly closed.

"And what will you do with all your free time?"

"I haven't given that much thought."

Unable to pry apart the metal, she gave up, her motions ceasing. She stood perfectly still as she looked down at the tin. "It's probably a good idea not to think too far into the future without wholly letting go of the past."

The words caught him unprepared, any authority he had over the situation slowly seeping away. He had assumed she was trying to call him out on his resignation but her comment was coloured with something distinctly different. He didn't know what to do. Walk away, don't be pulled back in, leave her alone to struggle with the blasted tin. His feet remained rooted to the spot, fascinated by the workings of her mind, wondering if he was about to witness a rare glimpse into it. Her fingers clutched the tin as if she were pulling strength from the metal.

"I wouldn't want to think that you were leaving because of me." Her voice dropped to a whisper.

He swallowed. Of course, she was the reason he was leaving, how could he ever stay, forever cast in the shadow of her rejection. He would never admit that to her, that would be relinquishing even more power. His face remained impassive, reveal nothing, the surface must stay calm even if the waters were stirred beneath it.

"No, I told you, it's time for me to leave."

Her head wobbled but she didn't agree.

"Because if it came down to it, I think I should be the one to leave."

He tilted his head, taken aback by her words, the thought that she would leave had never crossed his mind.

"Nonsense. You still have so much ahead of you. I'm nearing retirement." He gave an internal wince at the last word.

Her finger circled over the top of the tin. A picture of a cottage was painted on the lid and she carefully traced over the thatched roof. "If you were to leave I don't know if I would want stay on."

Her words, said so quietly, fell on him with such force that he felt an acute pain in his chest. Where would she go? Who would protect her? Only a few days ago he had vowed that it would be him and now he was ready to walk away. The realisation slowly unfolded that he would not see her every day. Originally, the idea had held a comforting appeal, that once away from her he could mend his broken heart but now, confronted with the immediacy of never seeing her again it was too much to bear. He stood in complete silence, his arms hanging by his sides, not knowing what to say to her revelation. He couldn't help his voice from dropping into the special register he reserved for her.

"You can't leave."

"You're far more valuable than I."

No, she was of infinite worth to him. Her fingers stilled on the tin. He leaned in with the intention of taking the tin and opening it, but his hands rested on top of hers, lingering without thought to the consequence. He closed his eyes, the ridge of her knuckles under her smooth skin taking him back to that day in the church. She remained perfectly still letting his hands rest on hers. He had stood like this before, overcome by a desire to kiss her. In the end, he had done that and so much more. Images of her filled his mind, the noise of his senses blocked everything out. The touch, the scent, the taste of her. He brought his head closer to hers.

"Do you want me to stay, Ruth?"

She lifted her head slightly still not looking at him.

"I think...I think it takes a very special intellect, a man of rare quality to make the decisions that you make. There aren't many people like you in the world, Harry."

Was that it then, the closest they would ever come to declaring their love for each other? For the first time, it struck him that she was as ineloquent as he in the language of emotion. His hands pressed on hers and she looked up at him.

"We all have blood on our hands, Harry."

His grip tightened. Who else could she confess her sins to? Who would give her absolution? Apparently, forgiveness was another language they stumbled over. He took the tin from her hands, fingertips sliding gently across her knuckles. She stood with her eyes downcast as if awaiting his judgement. He opened the lid and put the canister on the counter between them. He nudged the tin toward her.

"When was the last time you ate?" he asked, genuine concern in his voice.

"I could ask the same of you."

Their eyes met and she froze, the corner of his mouth from twitching slightly. The implication of her words filled the room, the space between them compressing, rich with shared memory. The moment passed like so many before. They both reached for a biscuit at the same time, fingers brushing inside the tin. He pulled back and she selected one, the thin wafer falling apart in her hand.

"I've broken it," she murmured.

She delicately extracted the piece, flicking the crumbs off, licking the residual sugar from her fingertips. He watched her fingers against her lips, a hunger stirring deep in his belly, one that he knew he could never fully bury. He took a breath and the hollow of his chest filled with warmth.

"Not entirely." He reached in and withdrew the other half of the biscuit, taking a decisive bite.

What was he to do with this woman? He could not leave her. He could not be with her. He looked down at his feet, his shoes nearly touching her boots. He had cornered her once again. He stepped back and she inhaled deeply as if he had set her free.

She picked up her mug. "I'll get started on that report."

She slid past him, her hand touching his, fingers grazing over his knuckles. He didn't know if it was by accident of design, it didn't matter. He drained the remainder of his coffee, the tension having subsided from his neck, his head feeling strangely clear.

...

The lights of the city spread out beneath him as he leaned on the rooftop rail. The skyline was never completely dark, there was always a spark of humanity in the gloom, life ongoing. One day he would join them in their blissful ignorance of threats and barely averted dangers, but not today. He felt like a man who had walked through the desert not expecting to make to the other side, only to have completed the journey on resources he didn't know he possessed. He had meant to leave the Service, leave her but he could turn his back on neither. He inhaled one final bracing breath, wondering where summer had gone, longing for its return.

As he walked down the stairs, his shoes echoed faintly on the concrete and her words echoed in his head. His mind twisted with the mental gymnastics involved in her reasoning. It was true; they could not force an everyday romance on their extraordinary lives. Whatever happened between them would always be inextricably linked to the Service. How was he to exist in a relationship defined by the Grid and not by his appetites? He was in limbo, neither heaven nor hell. He stopped, his hand tightening on the rail, another conversation playing in his head. On the ride back from Ros' memorial he had been too preoccupied with his own battered feelings to understand what she was trying to tell him. Funerals were for the living, some people never get that closure. There had been no funeral for George, no chance for her to grieve. She had confessed in the darkness of her room, that if she lost him she did not want to start over again. She was the one who needed the parameters of the Grid to hold her life together.

He stepped through the pods, pausing to take in take in the Grid. Lucas was on the phone, tracking down Dimitri. They had made the right decision with that young man, he had held up remarkably well on his first mission. Tariq was off in his land of binary codes, a veteran with a year under his belt. The place was starting to come back to life. Beth would be a good addition, fresh, new, from the outside world. He was not completely without hope, he had rebuilt the team and they would all live to fight another day. He crossed to his office taking a moment to let his eyes roam over his desk, the shelves, all of it unchanging. This was his life, he couldn't leave. He had lost Ros, and a painful litany of others but he had not lost her. She had come back to him when he needed her the most. She had remained steadfastly by his side, urging him on, pulling him back from the abyss of introspection. He had been sullen and cantankerous but she had not flinched. She would always be there.

The hair on the back of his neck lifted and he slowly turned around. She stood framed by the lines of his doorway. His thoughts had summoned her.

"I'm leaving for the night."

His chest moved with the same swell of yearning that he had felt for her on the roof. Stay, he silently pleaded, stay with me, Ruth. If we are broken, let us be broken together. He closed his eyes. As much as he wanted to say those words, he couldn't, they were loaded with expectation and need. He chose a far safer path, one that still held possibilities.

"Can I offer you a lift?"

She shook her head. "It seems I've inherited Beth. Lucas wants her to stay with me so I can keep an eye on her."

She took a step into his office, moving forward even as she made ready to leave. The black of her overcoat swallowed her tiny frame

There was nothing left to say. Once again, he cast about his mind, looking for a reason to make her stay.

"I withdrew my resignation," he said, taking a step toward her. It was the only thought that came to mind, the one subject they had not spoken of on the rooftop.

She smiled, relief washing across her face. "I knew you would."

"And how did you know that?"

"It's who you are. Honour, duty."

"We lie, manipulate and interfere. There is nothing honourable in what we do."

"But we do it to save lives. No one else outside of this room would understand that."

No one knew them the way they knew each other.

They stood, wrapped in their coats, insulated against the cold and each other. She shivered and he remembered the heat of summer.

"Do you think we've seen the end of Nightingale?" she asked.

"We've sent them a message."

She nodded, knowing that he meant the death of Nicholas Blake.

"There's always a possibility it may resurface," he continued. "Some things never entirely disappear."

He looked at her obliquely, wondering how she would take his words. She swayed into him; her shoulder softly brushing his arm. The contact was enough, steel and flint, a tiny spark passing between them. Her eyes met his, blue and unwavering.

"It's never over, is it?"

She placed her hand on his forearm and squeezed it reassuringly, as she had done that night after they had gone to dinner. He looked into her eyes. Was it hard for her? Was it hard to walk away? As if she had heard his thoughts, she let out a long sigh and slowly turned her head, releasing his arm.

"Good night, Harry,"

He watched her walk towards the door, the words still circling inside his head that he could never quite say. _I love you, Ruth._ She hesitated and he held his breath, afraid that she had heard his silent words. She continued on without looking back. He let her walk away, making no attempt to her to stop her. He stood with his hands in his pockets as she moved on the other side of the glass, just out of reach. It was what they did, this endless circle, she stepping off before him, he slowing down to wait for her. Their world would turn round again. He had attempted, failed, and learned his lesson. He would lick wounds and salve his pride. In the ebb and flow of the Grid, she would come back to him. On that day, when she asked him, there would be no hesitation, no second-guessing, no searching for signs, he would grab onto her and hold her tight.


End file.
